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bazmichaels · 2 years

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Career - Part One

It worked! My application form found its way through the entire federal government and wound up being snatched up by the U.S. Air Force, the entire USAF, who was so impressed by my application that they offered me a poor paying government job, sight unseen, in a strange cult land with mountains and temples and a big salty lake. I received a packet in the mail with a job offer from the Department of Defense to work as a GS-7 Mathematician at Hill Air Force Base in Ogden, Utah for around $13K a year. I was so discouraged from being rejected from every company I applied to and working a temp job folding cardboard boxes all summer, I instantly accepted the job offer. The brochure had pictures of the majestic Wasatch Mountain range and beautiful vistas and rugged western terrain. I thought it would be like living in Colorado. I thought nothing of it when everyone that found out said “Are you sure?” or “Have you ever been there before?”. I mean, how bad could it be? Well, I’ll tell you.

I hit the road about a week before my start date. I was excited to see some new parts of the country. I’d never been to the Plains states or the Mountain states. Turns out I hadn’t missed much, as far as driving across those states went. Kansas and eastern Colorado were just flat, desolate, miles and miles of dystopian post-apocalyptic vacuity.

I finally saw some actual terrain as I approached the Rocky Mountains on my second day of driving. As the void of nothingness receded in my rear-view mirror, I began to climb up into the tectonic uprisings of the Rocky Mountains. Now we’re talking. There were no mountains in southwest Texas – just the gentle rolling hills of hill country, and the giant hill that went down to Glenoaks Elementary. There were no mountains in Ohio – it was the bottom edge of the glacial ice sheets from the Ice Age. I went ‘skiing’ a couple of times there, and it was like going down the hill from my mom’s house to Studebaker Junior High. Despite the steep hills that made trudging to class so difficult, there were no mountains in southwest Kentucky. I drove through the lush green Smoky Mountains on the way to North Carolina, and those were formidable mountains, but they were smoothed over by eons of erosion and blanketed by a thick layer of vegetation. The Rockies erupted from the earth’s crust and exposed it for all to see. These mountains reached for the heavens with all the upward force they could muster. The craggy surfaces played with the sunlight and the shadows, mixed in with their earthly colors, to reveal an artistic vision from every exposed angle. The air became thin, crisp, and clear as my car struggled to climb the mountain passes. It was August, so I didn’t need to worry about snow and ice. I got to Boulder, Colorado around sunset. I had to stop and take it in. It was breathtaking. Stunning. Magnificent.

I stayed there overnight. I thought about what would happen if I stayed there forever. Had I been more of an outdoorsman or winter sports enthusiast I might have been able to come up with a good excuse, but I figured I should stick to the original plan.

The next day, I drove from the Rocky Mountains in Colorado to the Wasatch Mountains in Utah. These were also impressive peaks. They weren’t as big or wide-ranging as the Rockies, but they were close, and the city of Ogden went right up into the foothills. The air was noticeably ‘better’, in the sense that it was dry and crisp. It was like that in Ohio and Kentucky for about 3 days in the fall, but most of the time it was thick and heavy and filled with pollen in spring and summer. I loved the dry air immediately, and I didn’t seem to have any problems with breathing in the altitude. OK, so far, so good. I got a teeny, tiny, little furnished studio apartment, just off the main entrance gate of Hill Air Force Base (the base) for $100 a month. I would be working on the base as a civilian employee of the Department of Defense (DoD), and the Ballistic Missile Organization (BMO) of the United States Air Force (USAF). Oh right, ballistic missiles.

Those have fun behaviors for mathematicians to model. Classic Newtonian physics, with lots of real-world factors to consider. What kind of missiles are these? W-Wh-wha-what’s that, you say? The ones that carry thermonuclear warheads, you say? The big ones. Cool, cool, cool. OK, well, what’s the worst thing that could happen? (I’ve got to stop using that phrase.)

The first day of my professional career had finally arrived. My mother had bought me some nice new clothes as a graduation gift. Up until now, I had worn jeans or shorts and a t-shirt or tennis shirt. I put on a nice new pair of dress pants, a new dress shirt, a tie (yes, a tie), and my new dress shoes. Wow. I looked pretty sharp when I didn’t dress like a hobo. I drove onto the Air Force base, past a couple of 19-year-olds with automatic weapons and made my way to the human resource building. They set me up with an ID badge and I had forms to turn in and more forms to fill out. I finally made it to my new office and met my boss. His name was Leo, and he was a middle-aged balding man. He had a pleasant demeanor. I couldn’t tell if he had any real technical skills, or if he was a middle manager type. He introduced me to the work environment and the job responsibilities. He took me to my desk and there was a giant stack of COBOL manuals on it.

COBOL is a programming language used primarily for working with databases on IBM mainframes.

It was usually used for business applications, but they used it to catalog their inventory of missile parts. It was a good tool for keeping track of assemblies of parts and the relationships between them. I didn’t know the language, and my boss knew that from my application, so my first job was to learn. I don’t know what that had to do with being a mathematician, but I was down for whatever. Besides, mathematics was my placekicking and computer science was my punting – I was better at computer science and it’s what I should have been doing all along. This time, luck was on my side – and this is when it counted.

Before I started reading manuals, my boss took me around to meet my colleagues. There was an interesting assortment of people there. Young go-getters looking to start a career, old-timers just biding their time, old timers still getting after it, a guy trying to raise his large Mormon family on $13K a year. I did find out about a couple of other things I would be responsible for that had at least something to do with math. Engineers would perform flight simulations on missiles and capture the test data using telemetry, and our department was responsible for running the data through an analysis program. That program was written in a language called FORTRAN, which is a programming language designed for scientific computing and numeric computations.

Who knows when the program was written, but it was stored on punch cards. The data came on huge reels of magnetic tape, and the output was a bunch of numbers printed out on that old striped, green paper. I did have some experience working in that environment at WKU, so I just had to adapt to the slight variations in equipment.

I finished the day learning about COBOL in all its glory. Having already learned BASIC, PASCAL, and FORTRAN, COBOL seemed very straightforward. Hey, it wasn’t rocket science. (Ha! Did you see what I did there?) Things went well that first week.

The first order of business on the weekend was to check out the local tennis club. It was called the Ogden Athletic Club. I could tell it wasn’t a wealthy country club, but I was still worried that it would cost too much, because, if you hadn’t noticed, I was making squat. Fortunately, the cost was very reasonable even though the facilities were quite nice.

It had several indoor and outdoor tennis courts, racquetball courts, and a large workout area. I signed up right away and talked to the tennis pro about finding partners to play with. Huzzah! I was good to go. I wound up spending a huge chunk of my non-working time at the tennis club. Hint: There wasn’t much else to do if you weren’t a hiker, a skier, or a Mormon. Oh, there it is: the M word. Here’s the thing*: I didn’t know much about the Mormon religion, nor did I know that they had so much influence (so much influence) on the state. I know, I’m in the future now, too.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (LDS) was established in 1830 by Joseph Smith in Fayette, New York.

In 1820, a 14-year-old Smith went out into the woods to pray, when, wouldn’t you know it, God appeared to him along with Jesus Christ. Pretty cool. God introduced his son to Joseph, and JC and Joseph fist bumped (I think). God commanded Joseph to listen to his son. Joseph did. Then, 10 years later, an angel named Moroni led Joseph to a hill near Palmyra, New York, where Joseph found a bunch of golden plates. Cool.

He spent 3 months translating the plates into The Book of Mormon, which was published in 1830. The Book of Mormon contains religious writings of civilizations in ancient America between about 2200 B.C. and A.D. 421. It includes an eyewitness account of the ministry of Jesus Christ on the American continent following his resurrection in Jerusalem. Cool. The plates, made of gold, were never seen by anyone but Joseph.

“Even though this might make them Question if the plates are real, or not, This is sort of what God is going for….” -God, to Joseph Smith -All-American Prophet, The Book of Mormon Musical

In the following years, Smith established 3 cities and 2 temples, but the more he tried to grow his church and its membership, the more resistance he encountered. He and his followers faced intense persecution from local mobs, who eventually drove Church members from all three cities Joseph settled. To escape the escalating turmoil, Church headquarters moved from New York to Ohio, then to Missouri and later to Illinois. In 1839 the Latter-day Saints established the community of Nauvoo (Illinois), where turmoil followed the Church. At the height of this latest turmoil, Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum were shot to death by an armed mob in nearby Carthage, Illinois. (Bummer). That was the end of the LDS church. Just kidding.

Brigham Young succeeded Joseph Smith as the leader of the Church.

In February of 1846, he led the Latter-day Saints across the frozen Mississippi River into unsettled Iowa territory. They struggled across Iowa, eventually establishing a settlement called Winter Quarters near modern-day Omaha, Nebraska. Pursuing a vision initially articulated by Joseph Smith, Brigham Young prepared his people -- perhaps 17,000 of them by that time - for a historic trek across the vast wilderness to the Rocky Mountains, 1,300 miles to the west. The first pioneer party departed from Winter Quarters early the next spring and arrived in the valley of the Great Salt Lake on 24 July 1847. Once there, Brigham Young established many colonies across the west. When Utah was granted status as the nation's 45th state on January 4, 1896, Church membership totaled a quarter of a million, the majority living in Utah. With Church members making up the majority of the Utah population, their choices influenced the territory’s political, cultural, and economic make-up for years to come.

People began referring to Latter-day Saints as "Mormons" in the 19th century shortly after the Church was established. The word comes from the Book of Mormon, the sacred book of scripture published by Joseph Smith.

When I moved there in 1984, fully 70% of the population of Utah was active LDS. It was also 94% white. This may have had something to do with the fact that the Book of Mormon states that people with dark skin are descendants of Cain and are therefore evil and could not be members of the Church. It wasn’t until 1978 – 6 years before I arrived in Utah, that the president of the Church had a convo with God, as he does, and God decided it was high time to let black people into the Church. Cool. I never heard how the Church felt about Mexicans, but I don’t remember seeing any the whole time I lived in Utah. Until a few decades ago, the Church taught that they “shall be a white and a delightsome people,” a phrase taken from the Book of Mormon. I don’t believe that thinking changed overnight.

I mentioned that the Church had enormous influence over the lives of the citizens of Utah. Well, the Mormons I knew were very secretive around me, but I’ve learned of a few of these odd beliefs myself and I used the musical “The Book of Mormon” as my primary source of additional research:

"... I believe-That the Lord God created the universe. I believe-That he sent his only son to die for my sins. And I believe-That ancient Jews built boats and sailed to America. I am a Mormon. And a Mormon just believes. ... I believe-That God has a plan for all of us. I believe-That plan involves Me getting my own planet. And I believe That the current President of the church … speaks directly to God. I am a Mormon and, dang it, A Mormon just believes. ... I believe!!! That Satan has a hold of you. I believe! That the Lord God has sent me here! And I believe that in 1978 God changed his mind about black people!! CHORUS: Black People!! ... I believe! That God lives on a planet called Kolob! I believe! That Jesus has - his own planet as well. And I believe That the Garden of Eden was in Jackson County, Missouri. If you believe, The Lord will reveal it. And you'll know it's all true-You'll just feel it. You'll be a Mormon!!! And by gosh-A Mormon just belieeeeeeeeves!!!!"

-I Believe, The Book of Mormon Musical

Unique practices include:

Polygamy is (was?) not only cool but encouraged.

Every Mormon male is encouraged to go on a mission for 2 years after high school. You’ve seen them. White shirt, black pants, black tie, name tag. Carrying a sequel to the New Testament. On that mission, he can’t go swimming or play full court basketball or keep score in half-court hoops. Obviously, no sex. Not even oral. Girls can go on missions if they want to.

No caffeine. No alcohol. No premarital sex. I think they’ve backed off the caffeine restrictions lately.

There is a dress code for all Mormons.

Marriage and lots of babies is a must. You will be together for eternity if and only if you marry in the Temple.

Everyone must tithe to the Church.

Everyone must go to their Temple on Sunday. Only emergency workers can work on Sunday.

Everyone must get an annual worthiness review with the Church.

Every Mormon must wear Church-supplied underwear. Yep. There are two styles: men’s white undergarments and women’s white undergarments.

The state government is not officially run by the Church, but, at least when I was there, only Mormons could realistically get elected, so they effectively controlled the state laws. So, liquor was illegal, for example. They came up with some weird rule about private clubs being able to sell it to their members, if the members poured it themselves. I don’t know – I didn’t drink, but if I wanted to go to a night club, I had to join it the first time I went, even though I had no intention of drinking. Everything was closed on Sunday. It didn’t particularly affect me, but it was strange living amongst a whole state full of cult members. And being even half Mexican made me a little nervous in a white supremacist dominated state.

Dating sure got harder again, like in Ohio. I must assume some of the girls I met were prejudice, but most of the problem is that all the Mormon girls around my age had already married their high school sweetheart and started cranking out babies. I guess I could have tried to find divorcees coming out of their marriage that didn’t make it. My only real shot was with girls who were currently in college, but then I had to re-live all that drama. I briefly dated a sort-of-Catholic girl from the University of Utah, and then an actual Mormon BYU coed. Neither of those was going to work out.

I had a blast with two tennis-related adventures. The first adventure was when 4 of us from the Ogden Athletic Club (OAC) drove up to Sun Valley, Idaho for a big tennis tournament at a beautiful resort. The resort was so beautiful and luxurious, none of us could afford to stay there.

We packed up the trunk of my Ford Escort, including my 4-man tent and our 4 sleeping bags. We drove up on Friday afternoon and some of us had 1st round matches that afternoon. We all got out of my car, went up to the registration table, and checked in. Soon I was on the court playing my first match. I played a guy from Idaho State University, and I beat him in 3 tough sets. Afterward, the head coach from Idaho State came up to me and wanted to know my backstory. I told him a short version of some of my early chapters. He then asked me if I’d like to play tennis for Idaho State. I reminded him that I had already graduated from college, and he didn’t seem to care. At the time, all the registrars kept records in filing cabinets. There was no centralized database with internet search capabilities. I’m not going to lie, I thought about it. It helped that I had just started working for the Department of Defense, and I was scared of them. Also, I would be living a lie, and I’m a big believer in telling the truth (and I’m terrible at lying). It could have been my chance to live my P.E. PhD dream. Anyway, there was a party that night for the players and we ate as much of the free food as we could. I also had the most gorgeous little blonde tennis player from Idaho State come up and ask me to dance. We hit it off and made plans to go out and hit in the morning before our matches. OK, maybe I should try to pull off the Idaho State tennis scam. ???

We had to hit the sack early, so the OAC 4 packed into my car and we drove off the property and found a flat-ish spot off the side of the road, pitched the tent, got into our sleeping bags, and fell asleep. We all woke up at the crack of dawn, and we were all in excruciating pain in various places, based on where the rocks under us were overnight. It was another gorgeous fall day in Sun Valley. The courts were brimming with activity all day. A bicycle race zipped through the streets of the town. Beautiful, wealthy resort dwellers sauntered casually between the tennis matches and the bicycle races. My lovely blonde friend never showed on this otherwise fine morning. We didn’t have cell phones back in the olden times, so whenever something came up, we just lost track of that person forever. We all got knocked out of the tournament that day, so we decided to head back that afternoon. As soon as we made our plans and the two married guys called their wives, I had a very attractive potential sugar mama come up to me and basically proposition me. I always wanted a sugar mama, but alas, this also was not meant to be. The 4 of us headed home. I had left so many possibilities behind in Sun Valley, Idaho.

The other memorable occasion at the OAC was an All-Racquet Tournament, in which there were 4 events: Tennis, Racquetball, Badminton, and Table Tennis. The very large field was essentially composed of the racquetball players and the tennis players in the club. Racquetball players have a different way hitting the ball with the much smaller racquet than tennis players do with the longer tennis racquet, so it’s hard to be excellent at both. OK, now, did someone say Table Tennis? (i.e., Ping Pong?) This was big fun. I won the table tennis event and came in 3rd place in tennis. I got smoked by a racquetball player in the first round of the racquetball event, but then worked my way through the consolation round against the other tennis players that lost to a racquetball player. I did the worst in badminton, but it was a lot of fun to play competitively. I had never played competitive badminton, but I had seen the Olympics, and therefore had an idea of what to do. If I remember correctly, I finished 3rd overall. This was a great idea, whoever came up with it.

I played as many local tennis tournaments as I could. I was gaining confidence in my groundstrokes and my backcourt strategy, so I was playing more of a hybrid game, mixing serve and volleys with baseline points. I did well, and I wound up in the top 10 rankings in the whole state. I also won the Ogden Athletic Club championship.

There was a guy at work that I hung out with a little bit. I went with him when he made a beer run to Wyoming. We were the only people in the entire state who weren’t wearing a cowboy hat and boots. That is all I discerned about Wyoming on that trip. He was from Vermont, and he took me skiing over the winter to Powder Mountain, a ski resort in the mountains above Ogden. As you may have guessed, the snow there was powdery. And it was deep.

I had never skied in powder before. In fact, I had never skied on a real mountain before, just some glorified hills in Ohio. I couldn’t come close to keeping up with him, and I didn’t want to slow him down, so after he gave me some tips on skiing in powder, I let him go off and ski some more difficult runs. I was doing ok skiing the beginner’s hills, but I got turned around one time and accidentally went down a black diamond course. Ooooh noooo. I tumbled. I struggled to pull myself out of the deep, powdery snow. I put my skies back on.

I tried going down again. I tumbled again. Crap. There went one of my skies all by itself down the hill, and I was buried in a snow drift. Great. “I’ll just stay here, and they’ll find my corpse in the spring.”, I muttered to myself. I honestly don’t know how I got down that hill. I think I walked a lot of the way on the steep parts. I decided that I did not enjoy skiing. No. I did not.

So, speaking of snow, it snowed in Ogden in the winter. It snowed a lot in Ogden in the winter. Its average snowfall is 65 inches a year. Roads would get plowed, but there would still be a layer of ice on top of the concrete, and the snow could pile up 10 feet on the sides of the road. That was inconvenient whenever you had to go somewhere, but it wasn’t the bad part.

The bad part was the complete disappearance of the sun for weeks at a time. The winters when I was there had multi-week stretches of a thick, soupy haze that covered the basin below the mountains, and completely blocked out the sun for about 3 weeks straight. It really got to me. I got irritable and depressed. That was no way to live. Between the brutal winters and being a Stranger in a Strange Land, I started looking for other opportunities in other states.

Fun Fact: About 2 weeks after I got to Utah, I received a packet in the mail with a job offer for a similar Mathematician job in Washington, D.C. I would have snatched that up in a second had I received it before the Utah job offer. Oh, how different would my life have been if that had happened?

I had a tennis buddy who worked for a defense contractor called TRW (just the initials of the 3 dudes who founded the company). He told me about a job fair that TRW was holding. I updated my resume to include the stuff I did for BMO, put on my nice clothes, and went to the job fair, which was a handful hiring managers from TRW at Hill AFB. A job there wouldn’t get me out of Utah right away, but it could be a steppingstone, and it paid a whole lot more. I got in line and talked to a TRW hiring manager, who looked at my resume and told me I’d really be a better fit at their Norton AFB office in San Bernardino, California. Would I mind if he forwarded it there? I almost yelled with excitement, but I played it cool and said something like “Oh, sure, that would be fine”. I tried not to get my hopes up, but I couldn’t help it. It wasn’t long before I got a call from a supervisor for TRW San Berdoo. Her name was Sue Berks, and she told me she was interested in my resume – not the COBOL stuff as much as the FORTRAN. We talked for a while and then she said she’d like to fly me out for an interview. I almost yelled with excitement, but, you know, Mr. Cool.

Sue sent me a packet of information that included an airline ticket. I had never flown in an airplane before. I was 25 years old. The plane ticket said it was landing in “Ontario CA”. I was confused. Why was I going to Canada for this job interview? But my hotel reservation was in San Bernardino, California, so… I got out a map and found out there was city in southern California called Ontario and it had an airport. Who knew? Remember, we didn’t have the internet yet. I successfully navigated getting to the SLC airport, getting my boarding pass, getting through security, and boarding the plane.

Finally, after 25 years, I was flying on an airplane. As the plane started to descend, we were flying over the San Gabriel Mountains, banking down in the direction of my window, dropping in altitude, and hitting turbulence as the mountain tops grew nearer. It was a bit unsettling for me, but the woman next to me wasn’t concerned, and neither were the flight attendants, so I figured it was nothing out of the ordinary. We landed safely and I got a rental car and drove out to San Bernardino. The drive was less-than-impressive. The views along the 10 freeway between Ontario and San Bernardino were those of freight yards, poor people’s back yards, junk yards, and, at best, strip malls. But it was night-time, so I didn’t get the full impact of the grunginess until I went back out. I rolled into the San Bernardino Hilton on Hospitality Lane, checked in and went up to my room. It was late at night, but I noticed something unusual. I could hear traffic from the freeway – a lot of it. Every place I’d ever lived, traffic always dropped off dramatically after a certain time of night. Here, it never seemed to slow down.

The next morning, I got up, drove through the front gates of Norton AFB, past a different pair of heavily armed teenagers, and went in for my first professional job interview. I think it went well. I was honest about what I knew and what I didn’t know. I described what I learned in Ogden and how I learned it. I headed back to Ogden and waited for word. Time passed, as it is want to do. I got the call. I got the job. I went in to give Leo my notice. He was apoplectic. He offered me money, women, power, fame, anything to keep me there. “I’ll give you anything you want”, he pleaded. “I want my father back, you son of a bitch!” I roared as I ran him through with the sword my father made for him. Oh wait, that was a movie. In real life, he offered me a promotion, and I said I was sorry, but I just wasn’t happy. I would soon say goodbye to Ogden forever. (Or so it would seem.)

#memoir #career #ogden

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shiyuexiangdeshi · 2 years

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The innkeeper sweeps over his figure shrewdly. "300 a night."

He's dumbfounded for a good ten seconds. "What? You're kidding."

He shrugs. "Suit yourself. Sleep on the streets, maybe you can catch a carriage home."

"This is extortion," he seethes. "A room doesn't cost more than 80, I heard you just now!" He gestures vaguely towards the party that checked in before him, heading up the stairs.

"They're regular customers, special discount." The innkeeper taps his finger on the desk, a scowl on his face. "Either pay up or get out."

"A hundred," he bargains. The man clicks his tongue but fishes out a key. The money is swiped roughly out of his hand and the key tossed in his direction.

"Last door down the hall," he says, before muttering under his breath, "Cheap ass nobles."

Nobility... his clothes. Even though they were the simplest he could find, the fabric was just a little too shiny and smooth. His hands lack the sign of constant rough labor, which the man must have felt when taking the payment. But he has no plausible excuse to refute the assumption without drawing even more attention.

He smiles bitterly, but thanks him anyways. He finds his way up the narrow stairs and tiny hallway to his room. There's only a small bed and a side table provided, not even a window. The bed takes up three quarters of the room and a slightly ratty looking blanket covers the lumpy mattress. He drops his pack on the floor and pushes it under the bed.

He lays down and stares at the wooden ceiling. Now finally given a moment of peace, the thoughts start surfacing, swirling around with the whirlpool under his ribs. The sensation drags him underwater, sinking through the cotton and wood and earth. The line of lamp light from under the door doesn't show from this angle. It's dark.

His stomach rumbles and gnaws. It takes him a long time to force himself to get up and head out to a tavern, not quite tethered with his head still floating in the depths.

The noise hits him from outside, loud voices and clattering utensils and thump thump of empty mugs. He takes a seat at a table by the wall, where the light is dimmer. A server comes up shortly.

"We're running low on beef, but we still got chicken, lamb, or stew. Comes with bread and cheese. Drinks are beer or cider, no one just wants water," she rattles off. "What'll you have?

"Stew and cider, please."

"12 coins, got it?" He nods, and she marches off to the bar, where most of the noise is coming from. Slightly less out of it, his ears start tuning into the conversation.

"Nah, it's true! Heard it from Lee, his brother's in the castle," one of the drunken patrons swears. "The prince really said stuff it to the king!"

The group roars in laughter, and he tries to piece the reaction with his own memory of a stifling silence and frigid throne room.

"Well, the boy sure has guts! Wish I could've been there and cheered him on," another says.

"So the king really might change? What's the thing, some kind of sword fight? Are they gonna sell tickets?" They all erupt in laughter once more.

"I wouldn't mind having the prince as the king, yanno? Anyone would be better than the king right now."

"Ya got it all wrong, all of them suck. They think just taking in some random kid and letting them grow up in the palace is good enough? Well what do the rest of us get, nothing!" The man slams his mug down violently and the room visibly flinches. Some of his friends place hands on him to calm him down, but he flings them off.

"Ya can't stop me from speaking truth! Those royals... They've never worked a day in their lives, holed up in their little castle all the time like the rest of the world is too dirty; they probably don't even know the cost of a loaf of bread! Yet they're passing laws and taxes and thinking they're the darnedest thing to walk the earth, and everything's swell and dandy! They don't care," his voice breaks, " they don't care about us." He slumps onto the bar, shoulders shaking.

"That's him, isn't it? His wife..." he hears someone at a table nearby whisper.

"Those royals... they don't care. They're all shit." He manages a few more words in a wavering tone before fully sobbing. His friends pat his back, finally dropping the noise level down as they offer placations.

His fist hurts, clenched tight on the table. Not all of them, he wants to fight back. There's someone who does care about them. Someone who wants to change things.

The server comes back with a tray and a mug. "Your stew and cider," she sets down the food and drink. "Enjoy."

"Thank you." He takes a sip. The cider catches in his throat.

#october 2022 #prompt: umbrella + town #ndkou

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rantsintechnicolor · 2 years

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Salty Speedway

Bonneville Salt Flats, aka Bonneville Speedway, Wendover, Utah

The salt crunches beneath my shoes as I stretch and pop their crystalline bonds with my weight. I also detect tiny squeaks as the crystals rub against each other. I wonder when it was last liquid. During the last rain, of course. Since then, no one has stepped and crunched this salt. Is it fresh and new? Or has it only been refreshed?

This salt has been here for much, much longer. It could have once been bone and blood to some creature that perished nearby or from further up the watershed. And now I’m stepping on it. Enjoying the way it sounds, like a dry leaf on a fall day. Just 50 miles east is the Morton Salt Company, mining on the edge of The Great Salt Lake so we can have Kosher salt for our table. No doubt some of it is mined to be spread on the streets of Detroit and millions of snowy cities to banish the persistent winter ice. The salt looks like ice right now though the weather is dry and warm. It would take a very cold day indeed to make this spot icy and I wonder if it has ever been that cold here.

As you can imagine, this area is very flat. How else could multiple speed records be set here? The particular area we stand in would not be good for setting records because the surface is dotted with well established vegetation islands, little gray-green and browning hummocks of a salt-adapted plant known as iodine bush. It doesn’t have leaves per se. It just looks like a series of scales growing out of each other and sometimes branching. It appears less complicated than most plants, so perhaps it has persisted on this earth longer than others. But perhaps not. Adaptations take time to evolve, so perhaps this plant colonized salt flats closer to now. Perhaps its appearance is deceptively simple.

There are a fair amount of vehicle tracks that have crusted over with salt. We even passed someone camping out here. There are also a few animal tracks in the area, so it is hardly desolate though the living must be challenging between the conditions and the vehicle visitors. The morning sun is at the perfect angle to set the salt sparkling on the bright gray surface, terrible in its dazzling brightness. There is a dangerous beauty in its simplicity. It seems like the storms of the past that deposited the salt here are echoing on the breezes, making the short shrubs shudder at the memory.

#fluff #speedway #salt flats #bonneville speedway #salt lake #utah #wendover #writing #creative writing

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smp-live · 3 years

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The apocalypse happened a few years ago. And- it's vague, the apocalypse. It's not some big earth-shattering moment. It's confused tv reports and impulse decisions and little growing bits of tension until the pot boils over.

The details are fuzzy; it all happened so quickly that many civilians were left unaware of what exactly went down. One day, they were living, and the next, most weren't.

Nukes, EMPs, solar flares - the survivors find it doesn't matter. One way or another, the world ended, millions died, and everything’s different. Hostile. Harsh. Unforgiving. The sun is bright and searing, and radiation burns skin not covered head-to-toe.

People are cruel and will take advantage of anything they can. If you're not a part of an already-existing group, good luck.

Somehow, two men end up on a wooden pallet floating in the middle of the ocean. Maybe it was a plane crash, one of the few still running downed by a stray shot; maybe a boat capsized, embrittled by the radiation. Same as the apocalypse, it doesn't matter. What does is that now they’re surrounded by debris and a shark thirsting for blood and there’s one thing they both know: trust no-one.

So they don’t. Names hold power, as they’ve learnt over the past few years; names imply trust. When it becomes apparent they’re stuck together and the time comes to introduce themselves, the elder of the two stares out to sea and says, “Call me...” And that phrase brings back memories of a book he’d read long ago, in the Before Days, and so he finishes, “Ishmael.”

The younger panics and blurts out the first thing that comes to mind: “I’m Gunk.”

‘Ishmael’ raises a skeptical eyebrow, clearly amused. “Gunk,” he repeats. And ‘Gunk’ nods, crosses his arms.

“Yeah, bitch. It’s...” his mind blanks, “Russian.”

Ishmael’s brow climbs further, and he looks on the verge of laughing, lips twisting ever-so-slightly upward. “Last name?”

“Uh,” Gunk wracks his brain, and something from a history class, years ago, stands out. Nearly forgotten amongst all the useless information - what he calls anything that doesn’t directly contribute to survival, nowadays - and only clinging on through his brain classifying it as ‘important’ for God-knows-why. “Gorbachov.”

“Like... Michael Gorbachov?” There’s a hint of laughter in Ishmael’s tone now, the first in a while. He tries not to let that thought depress him.

Gunk nods, relieved at the reminder of the rest of the name, even if he still can’t place it. “Yeah. He was my father.”

“Michael Gorbachov, eighth and final leader of Soviet Russia, was your father,” Ishmael deadpans, and, frustrated at having been outplayed, Gunk scowls.

“What of it?” he challenges, which makes Ishmael laugh, throwing his head back to the blistering sun high above.

“Okay, Gunk,” he says, and yet it doesn’t feel patronizing.

They both know the other is lying, that much is obvious from the constant teasing and jokes about Gunk’s ‘father.’ But it doesn’t matter, because in the slow turning of the days, they grow close. After all, there’s not much to do on a makeshift raft in the middle of the ocean, other than chat.

Ishmael is handy, and the main reason for their survival. He knows how to purify water and fillet a fish, how to add on to their raft without nails and swim against the ocean current. Gunk wonders where he picked all that up, but never asks.

(A survivalist father and paranoid brother, whom Ishmael hasn’t seen in half a decade. The thought that they’re probably still alive brings him comfort.)

Gunk, on the other hand, does most of the grunt work. Fishing in debris that floats by, diving down for rocks when they briefly dock, and the ever-important duty of keeping the shark they named Clive from destroying their miserly raft. He keeps up a steady stream of chatter through it all, and Ishmael thinks that’s what makes the monumental effort to go on worth it. Then, he wonders when he let himself get attached.

(It was a week or so in, when Gunk had fashioned himself a shelf out of the bottom of a storage bin and some planks, and proclaimed it his ‘comfort shelf.’ Gunk felt the same when Ishmael didn’t tell him to dismantle it, only pushed it aside, even though they were supposed to use that wood to repair Clive’s last attack.)

They survive, they grow closer, they hesitantly trust, and yet, they don’t pry. They don’t share their real names. Not until one day.

Ishmael goes swimming out to a nearby island to scavenge for food and chop down a few trees, if he can manage. Gunk stays on the ship - an anchor is next on their to-do list, and so he’s responsible for keeping it from drifting off with his tiny paddle. Except it’s not well-crafted, and grey jaws reach up to snap at the wood he’s standing on so he uses it to stab Clive, and the tip breaks off. The raft starts drifting away.

“Ishmael!” he calls, then again, louder, “Ishmael! Fuck, man!” But he’s nowhere to be seen, and the current is dragging Gunk awfully far out from the island.

He keeps calling, shouting, screaming, increasingly panicked at leaving his friend, the man who’d helped him survive for months, now, behind. Until his voice grows hoarse the way it never did from rambling for hours on end, and a little speck appears on the beach of the island.

Ishmael waves widely at him, and he must be shouting but Gunk can’t hear it over the lapping of the waves. So he assumes what was said, hollers, “I can’t fuckin’ come back, arsehole!” and raises the remains of the paddle over his head to clarify.

The speck stills, then bursts into motion, tossing everything he’s holding aside and shucking his shoes. Gunk can practically hear him mutter about what an “ridiculous child” he is, because although they’ve never shared their ages Ishmael’s decided he’s the elder of the two, which obviously means Gunk is a child.

And then Ishmael dives into the water, and he’s closing the distance between himself and the raft with each stroke. He cuts a straight line through the waves, until he suddenly swerves to the left. Gunk is confused a moment, before he notices - a grey fin jutting out of the water next to him.

Clive goes in for another pass, then another, and Ishmael jukes him out both times. He’s maybe five meters away, now, but the shark is coming back so Gunk screams. But Ishmael’s head is underwater, and he doesn’t hear. Just keeps going, towards safety he won't make it to.

Clive barrels into him. Ishmael vanishes underwater.

He doesn’t come back up.

Gunk is diving in before he can properly think, pushing past the cold shock of the sea, as he uses his self-taught skills to bring him to where he guesses Ishmael last was. Then, he takes a deep breath, squeezes his eyes shut, and goes under.

After a nervewracking few moments, his elbow bumps into something and he latches on, desperately dragging it upwards. They break the surface and he gasps for breath, Ishmael limp against him.

The trip back is agonizing. Ishmael is deadweight, their clothes are waterlogged, and Gunk has never been the best swimmer. But Clive is still lurking, and he refuses to drown after all this time, so he manages to drag them both back to the raft through pure willpower and spite.

Gunk collapses next to where he’d heaved Ishmael onto the planks, taking a second to compose himself. Shivering violently, he curls into a ball - he'll have to go for a spare change of clothes. His eyes drift shut. In a moment.

Then, panic seizes his heart as he becomes aware of how still Ishmael is. He jerks up, staring at him, searching for any sign of life, anything-

But a moment later he relaxes, when Ishmael rolls over and starts heaving out saltwater. Gunk reaches over and pats him on the back until it subsides, and he falls back onto the wood.

“You,” Ishmael says, letting his eyes flutter shut, “are so stupid.”

Gunk feels a burst of indignation. “Hey, what the fuck! I just saved your dumbass, Ish-ma-el.” He scowls at Ishmael’s placid little twist of the lips.

“Wilbur,” he murmurs, hands folded over his chest.

“What?”

“My name is Wilbur.”

Oh.

“I’m Tommy,” he says after a moment of silence where it sinks in, what he’d just been told, the trust laid on him, and then lays down next to Ishmael - Wilbur, now.

Wilbur just hums and wraps an arm under his shoulders, tugging him close - which is new; they’re really going all-in with this trust thing, huh? - then says, “So, so stupid.”

“Oi,” Tommy protests, but leans in closer.

Things aren’t really visibly different, after that. They still bicker, still do the same daily tasks, still slip up and call each other ‘Ishmael’ and ‘Gunk’ - though it becomes less and less common, other than with a teasing tone. They finally get their anchor, which means Tommy has the chance to go on land; though he quickly grows to dislike it after an incident with a particularly pissed-off boar.

To an outsider, everything remains the same. But to the inhabitants of the raft, it feels different. More homely. Warmer.

Once, after Wilbur chides Tommy over something or another, Tommy rolls his eyes and says, “You know, we really are like brothers.” He tries to keep his tone joking, and to not let himself hope for the words to be true.

Wilbur freezes. “Don’t say that; I’ll cry.” He blinks once to keep the tears at bay, and tries to push down the warmth in his chest.

(They both fail.)

About four months in, a light appears in the distance, at night. They angle their sail towards it and the dark shadow on the horizon. A few days later, it becomes apparent what it is: a lighthouse.

Inhabited land. Civilization.

They gather their meagre supplies once they dock, then ditch the raft in favour of climbing the lighthouse. And, from the top, off over a hill, Wilbur spots it first, points it out to his brother, who squints-

A Dome.

#wilbur soot #tommyinnit #Fic #enderspeak #sbi rust #crimeboys #Love how we all saw that stream and went #''Yes. Those are the Rust boys.''#Also I can't write anymore apparently. Pain

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doctenwho · 3 years

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Hangovers, Love and Space Vodka (PE Pt. 2)

Hello! Requests are definitely open, even if I’m awfully slow! I feel bad at how slow these are coming out especially since there’s so many in waiting, but writing just hasn’t been on the table recently. Apologies for that!

But I’ve found the time and the motivation, so I decided to get this done! Thank you for your patience! This is such a cute idea, and it always makes me happy that people like the first parts enough to request a continuation. I had a lot of fun writing it, so I hope you readers like it too!

So, please enjoy the continuation of Purest Expression (also, you should probably read that one if you haven’t already, this fic heavily references it!) Also, I just thought the name was funny and I was in desperate need for one, so feel free to suggest others if you’ve got one!

Warnings: Talk of alcohol, but no drinking!

Word Count: 4,050

Summary: Check out the prompt above! :)

(Gif doesn’t belong to me, credit to the talented creator!)

You didn’t really remember a lot when you woke up. All you really knew was you'd drank far too much of that delicious cocktail, and that your brain was pounding in your head. This was quite possibly one of the worst hangovers you’d had, but honestly, you’d do it all over again to have another one of those space cocktails.

You rolled onto your back, lifting your hands to cover your eyes in an attempt to block out what little light managed to stream into the room. Your stomach churned at the movement, but it settled out easily enough after you didn’t move a muscle for a few minutes following your roll.

You relaxed back into the bed when your stomach settled down, and finally uncovered your eyes, staring up at the ceiling with a bleary gaze.

As you laid there, you tried to piece together the evening. The bits and pieces between arriving and having enough to drink that you could no longer walk a straight line.

You knew you’d gone out on the town with the Doctor—he'd been excited to show you things. He'd raved enthusiastically about the planet, and you’d listened along as your own excitement grew too. Then, you remember finally stepping out of the TARDIS and being completely astounded by this new planet, with all its colours, music and general liveliness.

The cute little bar wedged between two buildings; you remember that too. And of course, you remember the cocktail—you'd had two, or three, or... had it been four? You couldn’t really pinpoint it. The Doctor had said it was weaker than earth vodka, and maybe it was, but the after effects were definitely more intense to a human that human vodka was. That said you’d still be down for another drink or two before you left.

It was well worth the pain of a hangover to taste that drink again. Just the thought of it made your tastebuds tingle.

You let out a light laugh before rolling back over onto you side, but this time following it up with pulling yourself to a sitting position. The nausea was still there, but hardly noticeable; just a subtle warning to keep your movements slow and steady lest you start gagging.

Your head was still pounding, but you knew that wasn’t going to go away without pain killers, so you stumbled to your feet to go find the Doctor. He’d have something that could help, and at this point, you didn’t care what planet it came from, so long as it killed the raging headache and... well, didn’t kill you.

You found the Doctor in the kitchen of all places.

He was perched at the kitchen table with a mug of coffee in front of him, as well as a book. He startled when you stepped into the room, breathing a light, “oh, (Y/N),” as a greeting.

You continued into the room, wobbling on your feet for just a second, “good morning,” you greeted in return, forcing a smile onto your lips despite the headache, “you don’t happen to have any pain killers do you?”

The Doctor frowned, “are you unwell?”

“Just a bit of a hangover,” you promised with a wave of your hand, “a little worse than an earth alcohol hangover, but it’s manageable. I’ll be fine, my head just really hurts.”

“Right, of course,” the Doctor nodded, pushing himself up and moving towards the cupboards. He rifled around the cabinets, reading labels of things and putting them back before he finally found what he was looking for, “these aren’t of your earth, but they are basically the same thing as your planet’s Advils. I’m sorry I don’t have anything that’ll help from your earth, I should really invest in some if I’m going to keep soliciting companions from earth.”

“Soliciting?” You snorted a laugh, which made you wince lightly, “really?”

“Well, I do tempt you humans away with the offer of the entirety of the universe, now, don’t I?” You smiled at the Doctor’s cheeky grin as he joined you at your side, setting the pill bottle in front of you to do with as you pleased, whether that was to ignore it, or take a couple, before he carried on to the counter. “No different really, I offer the universe in exchange for companionship, and I’m proud to say very few have ever declined. Now, would you like a tea, or coffee?”

“Jokes on the ones who declined, they’re really missing out,” you huffed out as you picked up the pill bottle, surveying over the list of ingredients. None looked too out of the world, but honestly, you’d do anything at this point to ease the thrum of your headache, so you uncapped the bottle, “surprise me.”

The Doctor turned back to flash you a grin from where he’d busied himself at the counter, “will do, my Dear.”

You shook a few pills into your hand from the bottle, eyeing them as if they were about to change colours or something similarly alien-like, but when none of that happened, you frowned, “how many do I take?”

“Well...” the Doctor turned thoughtfully to lean against the counter, “I’d say to start off with one and see if it does anything for you. There will be small differences from planet to planet, and we wouldn’t want you to overdose. After a half an hour you can try taking another pill if one doesn’t help.”

“Sounds good,” you popped a single pill into your mouth before you could hesitate. As if the Doctor was magic, he slid a mug of you go-to morning beverage towards you, and you washed the pill down with a sip of the perfectly prepared drink.

You savored the taste of your drink, sighing into the warmth. When you’d had a couple sips, you put the cap back on the pill bottle and slid the bottle to the center of the table. You watched the Doctor move around the small kitchen as he made himself another coffee before joining you at the table.

The two of you settled into a silence, thankfully. You hunched over the table, your elbows on the surface and your cheeks cupped in your palms, as the Doctor continued reading, but he looked like he was lost in his thoughts instead of actually reading.

“How long have you been up?” you asked slowly, squeezing your eyes shut before blinking them open again to see the Doctor’s gaze on you. “You’re kinda spacing out.”

“I’ve just... some things on my mind,” the Doctor admits with a tiny curl upwards of his lips. It didn’t really answer the question, but at the same time it did. You didn’t think the Doctor had even gone to sleep. “Has the headache eased at all?”

Your mouth formed an ‘o’ shape noticing suddenly that the headache was in fact almost gone. You hadn’t even realized, “yeah,” you informed with a laugh, “almost gone. I didn’t even notice—space things are so much better than earth things; the drugs and alcohol.”

“That would be a very worrying observation if I didn’t know exactly what you were talking about,” the Doctor snorted a laugh. You laughed along too, even if the statement was completely true—it had only been about ten minutes and the space Advil was already working wonders, where as the earth stuff could take anywhere from fifteen to thirty minutes to actually kick in.

“So,” you drawled after another string of comfortable silence between the two of you, “what’s been on you mind then?”

The Doctor eyed you up and down briefly before sighing, running his fingers through his hair and making his already untamed locks stand up at odder angles, “I was just thinking about yesterday.”

“Yesterday,” you parroted under your breath. You’d been thinking about yesterday too. How could you not be? There were still gaps in time where you don’t really remember what happened. “What happened yesterday?”

“You don’t remember?” The Doctor blinked.

“No, I do,” you leaned back in your chair with a sigh, “well, most of it, I think. But some of it... I don’t know? It’s kind of a blur. I guess the cocktails started hitting me towards the end of the evening, I barely remember coming back.”

“You were a bit out of it,” the Doctor admits sheepishly, “glad I cut you off at three drinks then.”

“I could’ve handled more,” you scoffed, smiling widely in a teasing way.

The Doctor rolled his eyes, leaning forwards, closer to you as his voice dropped, “I do believe three is probably your limit, Love.”

You let out a bout of bright laughter and the Doctor smiled softly. You loved how easy it was to banter with the man—how the two of you were so comfortable with the other that you could tease back and forth like this.

As if to prove his point, your head gave a warning thrum of pain that drew a shallow breath from you, “yeah,” you shook the pain off, “you’re probably right about three being my space-cocktail limit.”

The Doctor shook his head fondly at you as he settled back in his chair, “so, anything you’d like to know about yesterday? I did promise I’d tell you anything you’d like to know?”

You thought back to what you remembered about yesterday: the walk from the TARDIS to the bar, the ideal seating at the bar, those amazing rainbow cocktails that tasted like dreams. Drinking and chatting and laughing with the Doctor—splitting a plate of chips that were unbelievably delicious... and then... well, the space English the TARDIS didn’t bother translating for you.

“What was the bartender saying to you?”

The Doctor drew in a breath as his cheeks dusted the faintest pink, “nothing important, I assure.”

“C’mon,” you pouted, cradling your half drank, significantly cooled drink between your hands as you leaned towards the Doctor this time, “you said you promised to tell me about yesterday, right?”

The man chewed at his lip, subdued, but clearly trying to figure out the best course of action, “alright, well, we... I suppose we were acting a tad bit... involved? And... some assumptions were made about us by the barkeep.”

“Involved how?” you raised a questioning eyebrow. “And... what kind of assumptions?”

“Involved involved,” the Doctor cleared his throat, eyeing your level of understanding before rubbing his forehead and adding, “uhm, romantically involved. Those were, well, the main assumptions made as well.”

You gaped for a second before a thought came back to you suddenly, “he kept calling us lovers.”

“Yes,” the Doctor managed a light, fond smile, “I did try to explain it to him: us, our companionship—but, well, he... he didn’t believe me.”

“He didn’t believe you?” You repeated back, surprised.

“No,” the Doctor laughed, rubbing the back of his neck, “he made some pretty solid points in favor of us being romantically involved too, actually.”

“Oh yeah?” you teased, “and what points might those be?”

“Well, we were sitting fairly close--”

“As friends do,” the excuse came easily. The Doctor raised an eyebrow, but continued on like you hadn’t spoken.

“--I was hovering close to you, I suppose... A bit at least--”

“You were worried about me,” you interjected with a fond eyeroll at how wrong the bartender had been. Lovers? Come on, no way. You guys were... you were friends. Obviously. Though the thought of the Doctor hovering over you, making sure you were okay warmed your heart.

“--we leaned into each other’s sides, uhm, multiple times throughout the evening--”

You struggled for an excuse for that one, you did tend to lean into his space, not that the Doctor ever seemed to mind. And he liked to press into your personal space as well—neither of you really cared about proximity, so you managed a one shouldered shrug, “it was just loud in the bar, hard to hear each other.”

“--and, well, he pointed out I was staring at you occasionally; odd for him to have noticed, when I didn’t even realize I was doing it.”

You couldn’t come up with an excuse for that one, eyebrows furrowing in confusion that made your breath catch in the weirdest way. He’d been staring at you? Why did that make you feel so happy?

“And then the fact that you returned the stare when I wasn’t looking. Honestly, that barkeep spent more time watching us than he did working last night, I’m sure.” The Doctor let out a playful scoff, genuinely amused that the bartender had put more time into them than his job.

You however, were suddenly caught up in the information.

He’d been staring at you when you weren’t looking—fondly, you were sure, if it had caught the bartender’s attention and led him to believe the two of you were in a relationship. Then there was the fact that you were staring at him in return? You’d been caught by someone staring at the Doctor? You knew you did it sometimes, how could you not? He was a good-looking, kind, compassionate man who liked your company. Just being with him made your heart speed up.

“That doesn’t mean we’re a couple,” you forced yourself to say, even if... well, you were questioning it just slightly. You knew, of course, that the two of you weren’t a couple but... “That bartender was just bored and looking too far into us, I’m sure he was doing it to everyone...”

“Of course not, surely we’d know if we were, right?” the Doctor agreed with a light grin. The grin only lingered for a second before it faltered and he chewed at his bottom lip. You were about to question it, but he spoke again before you could, “but, well, I suppose there is the song he had to go off of as well.”

“The song?” You questioned before it all flooded back—well, most of it, at least, “we were on a stage. We... we sang together. Was that a karaoke bar or something?”

“We were,” the Doctor ducked his head in a nod, “we... did. And it, well, it was kind of like your earth karaoke bar. Do you remember anything about it?”

You tried to remember, you know the Doctor explained it last night after he’d gotten the information from the barkeeper, but you still don’t really know. And you’re sure there were bits and pieces that he didn’t tell you last night as well. So, you shook your head.

“Right,” the man nodded, settling his elbows on the tabletop as he held his chin up, “well, the concept of the song ritual we were roped into performing is that you sing whatever song best corresponds to what you think about your peer. I’m not exactly sure how it works to be honest, the expression through song is just strong.”

“So, whatever I felt about you would be... conveyed through a song?”

“Yes.” The Doctor gives a light nod.

“And whatever you felt about me would... would also be?”

“Indeed,” his head tilts as he surveys you, trying to piece together where you were going with this string of questions.

“But... we sang a duet, didn’t we?” You furrowed your eyebrows, running a finger along the rim of your mug. You faintly remembered chiming in with the Doctor’s song, instantly knowing the new lines to his song despite not knowing his lines, or the actual song. “Does that happen? What... what does it mean?”

“Well,” the Doctor cleared his throat, looking nervous. “It does happen, it’s just, well, it’s rare? I suppose. The barkeeper, just before we left, told me that the last time he saw a duet happen during the expression through song ceremony was when he was a child.”

“Wow, okay,” you bit the inside of your cheek. You had a feeling you knew what it meant, and the thought made your cheeks heat up, but you asked anyways, “what does a duet mean?”

“Well, generally speaking...” the Doctor shot you a small, crooked smile, “it means that we feel exactly the same way about each other. Exactly the same to the point that our expression would be through the same song, at the same time.”

“Wow,” you couldn’t help but repeat, “that’s... wow. So it really is unusual then? Why did it happen to us? Was it a fluke?”

“No, don’t think so,” the Doctor shakes his head, a blush rising to his cheeks as his fingers tap against the table, “something like that would be hard to fake, so I doubt it was a fluke. We chose the song—deep in our subconscious when thinking of the other... I mean... I didn’t know the lyrics beforehand, did you?”

“No,” you breathed out, fingers fiddling with your empty mug, “I don’t even think I remember the lyrics now. They were just... in my head when they needed to be. I didn’t even know your lines of the song. It’s weird that we were the people that got the duet—random visitors.”

“It was the same for me,” the Doctor sends you a small smile, “I think few people view their... companion the same way their companion views them. It seems highly unlikely that any two people can feel the exact same way...”

You’re not sure why, but there’s something different about the way the Doctor says companion this time around. Maybe he holds a different fondness than you’re used to, or perhaps some other reason, but there’s an unfamiliar warmth in the word.

“But we did,” you whisper, looking up momentarily and catching the Doctor’s eyes before dropping your gaze back to your cup.

“But we did,” the Doctor repeats, just slightly louder than you. Like he too can’t wrap his brain around it. There’s a pause before the Doctor’s clearing his throat, forcing a crooked smile onto his lips. “Well, I promised you we head to the shops for some alcohol and other treats, didn’t I?”

The Doctor stands, moving swiftly towards the door without looking back.

“I meant it, you know?” You speak before you even realize you’re speaking. You don’t see the Doctor stop, since you’re facing the other direction, but you hear his steps come to a halt, feet planting in spot.

He doesn’t say anything for a second, which prompts you on, “I do need you.”

He still doesn’t say anything, or move, so you stand and gather both your mug and his own, walking in the opposite direction from him towards the sink. You set the mugs in but don’t touch the faucet, instead mumbling a soft, “I want you.”

You’re not even sure if he’d still there anymore, or if he’d taken you moving as his cue to escape. You don’t turn to look, afraid to not find him there, so instead you whisper what little of your lyrics from yesterday that you remember, “come on back to me.”

Another moment of silence drags in before you hear the Doctor moving. His steps are quick, and you think he’s leaving out the door when suddenly hands are on your waist and he’s swiftly turning you around and gently pushing you against the edge of the counter beside the sink.

You manage to muffle your surprise as his lips press against yours, soft but urgently all the same.

You melt into his lips, eyes slipping shut as his hands leave your waist, one wrapping around your middle, as the other rises to cup at your jaw. It spurs you on too, your arms wrapping around his neck and pulling him just slightest bit close, to which he blindly follows your lead.

You don’t pull away until the need to breath outweighs how good it feels to be kissing him.

You both gasp for breath, but neither of you pull away, lips still touching the faintest bit, “I didn’t think you even remembered the lyrics... how... intimate the duet was...” It’s the first thing the Doctor’s said since trying to flee the room.

You slowly open your eyes, catching his eyes waiting to make contact and a smile pulls at your lips. You pull away a bit, pushing your forehead against his, “I didn’t really remember the lyrics until just now, but I never forgot the feeling of singing them to you, and hearing you singing them back to me.”

The arm around your waist tightens around you, “I didn’t know you felt the same way,” the Doctor whispers. “I didn’t want to... make you uncomfortable, or chase you away. And then you woke up this morning, and didn’t remember anything with the hangover, so I... was going to let it go.”

You’re sure you make a noise of protest, maybe even disappointment, but you only assume because the Doctor lets out a chuckle before stealing another kiss that you’re more than happy to give.

When he goes to pull back, you snake your hand up to hold him in place, mumbling softly against his lips the last of your lyrics, a message he’d sure to understand, “I love you sundown.”

The Doctor freezes against you pulling back just enough to look into your eyes before a smile creeps onto his face. You smile at his smile, watching him fondly as his head tilts in that adorable way, affection bright in his eyes, “and I, you, my Love.”

You melt at the words leaning into him and pressing your head against his chest, fitted perfectly under his chin like a puzzle piece. Your arms wrap around him, and his move to hold you against himself just as you had done to him seconds earlier.

You stay like that for a while—you're not sure how long. You feel protected tucked against the Doctor, and it’s a feeling you’re never going to forget.

“How’s your head?” he asks softly above you, the voice after so long of nothing by his steady heart beats startles you. The Doctor presses an apologetic kiss to the top of your head.

“Better,” you decide, nuzzling closer to him, “why?”

“Well, I did promise we’d check out the shops, if you’re feeling up to it.”

“I almost forgot about that,” you laugh, finally pulling away. The Doctor unwraps his hand begrudgingly, frowning as he does so. You let out a laugh, slipping your hand into his. “I wanna see the shops before we leave this evening. We’ve gotta get some of that vodka.”

“I see more hangovers in your near future,” the Doctor snorts as he leads you along by the hand.

“Oh, and, we should definitely pick up a gift for the bartender from last night,” you add, ignoring the Doctor’s teasing jab at your weak human alcohol tolerance.

“Why’s that?”

“Well, without his instance that we sing, and his instance that we were a couple, none of this,” you gesture down to your interlocked hands as the two of you step out of the TARDIS and onto the busy, colourful streets, “would’ve happened.”

The Doctor’s quiet for a second as the two of you fall into step. “There’s nothing in the universe that can ever thank him enough for what he’s done,” the man softly admits, giving your hand an adoring squeeze that drives his words home.

Your cheeks heat up as you tuck yourself in his side. He moves easily to accommodate you, releasing your hand to wrap his arm over your shoulders instead. You move your hand to squeeze around his waist, grinning as you respond cheekily, “I don’t know, Doctor, the space vodka is pretty good...”

The man sputters at your response, glancing at you with a raised eyebrow, “I was being all cute and you’re comparing the gift of our newfound relationship to vodka?” the man questions, genuinely dumbfounded.

You give a one shouldered shrug at his side, giggling at his reaction. It wasn’t long until the man was letting out a fond sigh, thumb stroking against your collarbone, “what am I going to do with you?”

The tease in his words has you smiling. There really is nothing in the universe that seems equivalent to the gift the bartender bestowed to you, but... yeah, a bottle of space vodka was a nice start.

<><><><>

Hello again! Hopefully you liked this continuation. Not sure if it kept to the prompt exactly, I got a bit carried away writing it, but nonetheless, I hope it was good! Feel free to prompt again if it wasn’t what you were looking for, as always!

I’ll try to keep up with the prompts but idk how well I’ll be able to manage between life and the other works in other fandoms. Anyways, hope you have a great morning/day/night!

#Tenth Doctor #tenth doctor x reader #tenth doctor x you #10 #10th doctor #10th doctor x reader #10th doctor x you #doctor who #doctor who 2005 #reader insert #dw #TARDIS #ten #writing prompt #writing requests #fanfiction #fanfic

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togglesbloggle · 3 years

Text

How We Decided

The day after tomorrow- that is, February 18, 2021- the Perseverance rover will attempt to land on the surface of Mars. It will enter the planetary atmosphere at an acute angle, giving it as much time as possible to experience drag and slow down from orbital velocities. Because Mars’ air is so thin, and the rover is so heavy, this will fail- in the best case, Perseverance would still be going almost a thousand miles an hour when it impacts the surface. To help save itself, the craft will deploy a parachute of advanced design, seventy feet across and able to withstand supersonic velocities. This, too, will fail. Even with a parachute, there is simply not enough air between Perseverance and the Martian surface to slow it down all the way. So this is where the rockets kick in. Once air resistance slows the rover to a bit less than two hundred miles per hour, the heavy heat shield will be jettisoned, and a system of secondary rockets will fire against the direction of motion until it slows to near-hovering. In a final flourish, the rover will descend from the rocket-boosted frame on coiled springs, until it touches down in the western part of Jezero crater in the northern hemisphere of Mars.

As it happens, Perseverance’s destination was one of the very last things we decided about it- not until the craft itself was fairly thoroughly engineered and designed. Formally, the decision was made by the mission directorate. In practice, they follow the consensus of the scientific community, which in turn hashes things out at a series of open-invitation workshops. Things began with a call for white papers- an open suggestion box, basically. In 2015, the first workshop narrowed things down from thirty serious proposals to eight candidates. In 2017, the second workshop further winnowed the list down to three. And in October of 2018, after three days of presentation, debate, and discussion, the final workshop selected Jezero Crater from these final three candidates using a simple vote of all attendees, and passed on the recommendation to the mission leads.

I haven’t been in the business for very long, so the final workshop was the only one of these where I actually participated. It wasn’t a close vote as such, and I didn’t break any ties, and technically we were just making a strongly worded suggestion. Nonetheless, my vote is one of the reasons why the Rover will be going to Jezero Crater instead of Syrtis Major or Gusev, and I think I’m entitled to feel ownership of this mission choice, just a little bit.

(This is, of course, terrifying.)

Having gone through the experience, there were a few surprises worth noting. The first was how small some of the numbers are here. The conference was not very large: only thirty proposals, debated by just a few hundred attendees. I’ve seen book review contests with more entries, and that are read by a wider audience. Which is to say, this is a situation that was, and is, extremely responsive to individual effort. In that small a room, populated by people that are philosophically committed to changing their minds when they see good evidence or a good argument, one person can stand up and change the future in a very real way.

The second surprise was the attendance requirements. Or rather, the lack thereof. The project is public, paid for by American taxpayers, to whom I am profoundly grateful. And one way the process reflected that public-spiritedness is that this is not a walled garden. A small attendance fee (iirc, $40?), and you’re in. You get a vote, if you want to use it. A few non-scientists even took us up on this; there’s one retiree (a former schoolteacher, I think) that’s attended every major conference I’ve been to in the last few years, and sets up a small table in the back with his home mineral collection just for fun. In practice this open-door policy is limited by the obscurity of the event itself; if you don’t move in research circles, you have to be something of a space exploration superfan to hear about it. Still, as symbols go, you could do worse.

And now that we’re coming up on the day itself, the same kind of public-facing mindset is making me think about why I was persuaded to vote for Jezero Crater, what it means to explore there, and how I’d justify that choice to those of you that made the ongoing discovery of Mars possible in the first place.

If you want to know what Perseverance is like, and what you can reasonably do with it, start with Curiosity- the two are built, more or less, on the same chassis. That means you have a mobile science lab about the size of a Volkswagon Beetle. Add some mechanical improvements (no more wheel punctures!) and a few bells and whistles (microphone! helicopter for some reason!). Trade out some of the scientific instruments- raman spectroscopy instead of a mass spectrometer, for example. And it’s got these:

That, dear reader, is a sample return canister. Not to be returned immediately, alas, but to be returned nonetheless. One of Persevereance’s primary directives is to find interesting rocks, collect them, and leave them in place for a sample return mission in the early 30s. There’s a ton of work we can do in situ, but there’s even more we can do in a clean lab back home; things like isotopic analysis really need a much more controlled environment than you’ll get in the field. And so a major, major consideration is to optimize Perseverance’s landing site for cool rocks that we’d like to take back home.

The other thing that Perseverance is really good at is astrobiology. There’s no such thing as a life sign detector as such, but this rover represents an attempt to approach that ideal: instruments like SHERLOC and SuperCam are adept at finding organic compounds and fine-scale mineralogy and chemistry that might be influenced by microbial metabolism. This is a natural extension of what we’ve been learning so far: Spirit and Opportunity showed us that Mars formed under the influence of liquid water. Curiosity showed us that this was not just wet, but actively habitable: lakes and rivers at a neutral pH under a rich and temperate atmosphere. The next question along this line is the hardest, and the scariest: we know it was habitable, but was it inhabited?

If you’re like me, that question makes you feel weird. Collecting rocks is one thing, but a fossil? The mind rebels. We’ve spent the last two generations of space exploration tempering our expectations, reminding ourselves that the other worlds in our solar system are largely barren and dead, learning again and again how precious life is in the cosmos. It’s hard to get in the mindset of people back in the 40s and 50s who could, somewhat reasonably, imagine that Mars might not just host life but multicellular life, vegetation and robust macroscopic ecosystems. We look back at the science fiction of the era, swarthy soldiers hopping from planet to planet in silver rockets, and laugh at the naivete. A smile at the exuberance of youth, if we’re feeling generous. When we were first beginning, we may have imagined ancient canals on Mars and crystal cities on Venus, but that was when space was a blank canvas for us to paint our fantasies. We’ve learned so much since then, and if it was less fun, at least it was true. We did the hard thing and accepted reality over fantasy. We accept that extraterrestrial environments are hostile to life- cratered, silent, and still. We’re grownups now.

Unless…

Unless.

Imagine that we were born just a bit earlier. Say, three and a half billion years or so. We raise our telescopes to the sky, and we see a sister-planet. Not red, but white and blue, with an atmosphere full of clouds and multiple large bodies of water scattered across its surface, prominent ice caps and snow-capped highlands, rivers tracing their way down to the lowlands in the north. (Maybe the water is all under the ice, not open to the air at the surface; maybe the liquid pools are small and limited to craters, not feeding a large ocean.) Sober scientists might have suggested we shouldn’t get our hopes up too much- after all, the gravity is much lower, there’s no tectonic recycling, and there’s no protective magnetosphere. But is sterility really the default assumption we should be making here? Is ‘we are alone in the cosmos’ really the most sane conclusion to draw from this situation? Is it not worth, perhaps, sending a rover to go see?

We’ve adapted our sensibilities to a dead solar system because in the moment we’re looking, it kind of is. We’re hopeful for the icy moons- and the evidence keeps mounting there as well- but the terrestrial planets are a grim reminder of the fragility and contingency of our own world. The thing is, the more we learn, the more we discover that we’re a bit late to a very, very interesting party. Venus is a hellscape, but it probably didn’t start that way. Mars is a desert, but once it was an oasis. What makes Earth special among the terrestrial worlds isn’t that it developed a temperate climate, but that it kept a temperate climate for more than four billion years. Stability, not habitability, is the party trick that makes us unique in the solar system. And if we’re really committed to being grownups, to accepting what’s real instead of what’s easy, we have to learn that lesson too.

And life does not need four billion years to begin. Not even close.

That brings us to Jezero Crater. The most interesting feature here is a large river delta- based on some clever geology, we’re pretty sure that a large river emptied into the crater during Mars’ wet period. When the rapidly-flowing water hit the still water of Lake Jezero, the loose sediments being carried along the current all fell out of suspension at this place, forming a large pile of detritus at the mouth of the river that accumulated over the lifetime of the system. Even more interesting, check out this geologic map:

See those tiny teal deposits to the right side of the image? Those are also river delta deposits. Which means the thing labeled ‘delta’ on this map isn’t the original extent- it used to be much, much larger, at least twice as wide. Which also means that the outer edge of the ‘delta’ that we see here in this image is actually an erosional surface, and we get a natural cross-section of the thing with the oldest deposits at the bottom and the youngest at the top, just before Mars lost its hydrosphere. By climbing the outer edge, we can move through time across a large fraction of the habitable period.

Here’s another image I’d like you to see:

The crater I’ve been showing you is the small circle in the lower right- color is elevation, covering a span of about 5 km. The black line is the watershed of that river, the region of Mars that channeled water to the delta. In other words, the river delta collects sediments- and potentially, biosignatures- from a region hundreds of kilometers in diameter, and gathers them all in one place, neatly sorted by time.

For this reason, ancient deltas on Earth are a favorite of paleontologists. In addition to being comfortably wet and active itself- plenty of access to biologically important nutrients, fresh supplies of liquid water, and a nice dynamic environment- deltas do the legwork for us. Rather than exploring a huge fraction of the planet with a tiny rover, hoping that we stumble upon an ancient life sign, we can position ourselves at the mouth of the proverbial fire hose and let life come to us.

This does come with some tradeoffs. Most importantly, whatever we find, we won’t know the original geologic setting. If we find an unambiguous fossil of some kind- a microbial mat, perhaps- then we’ll know less than if we’d found it in its original home. And if we don’t find life, then the samples we take will be similarly uncertain. They’ll be defined in time, at least relative to one another, but not in space. In the case of life signs, this is an important caveat, but the bare fact of proving that extraterrestrial life exists is sufficiently monumental that it’s still a secondary concern. But if we’re just talking about geology, that’s a hard thing to lose; that terrifying multi-stage descent isn’t the only risk we’re taking. We’re leaning into the astrobiology mission hard with this one.

And the search for life is, in itself, fraught. That’s putting it mildly. There’s every chance that any evidence that’s even slightly marginal is going to touch off decades of debate, rather than being some kind of slam-dunk. As it should! Life is such a fuzzy concept, and such an important concept, that it should absolutely be held to the highest degree of scrutiny we can muster. This is why it matters that Perseverance includes sample return- in the highly likely case that the findings are disputed, we’ll hopefully have the chance to subject those samples to the highest degrees of scrutiny. So it feels like the right time to go hunting.

On top of that, there’s the ‘evidence of absence’ problem. Strong biosignatures update our priors very hard in the direction of life on Mars. But what is the correct amount of evidence necessary to convince us that Mars never was alive? I’m not sure, but failure to find microbial mats in Jezero probably isn’t enough. So the search for life can succeed, but if it ‘fails’ that doesn’t necessarily teach us much; the best experiments teach you something no matter what, and ideally a commitment this large would meet that standard. This is, more or less, baked into the search for extraterrestrial life, and there aren’t too many ways out from under that problem.

That said, Jezero in particular has some compensation. As I mentioned, we’re collecting a lot of good data regardless; and even without the gologic context, there’s a ton of opportunity to sample different minerals and how they formed, and get a nice broad sample of the Martian surface over time. And, even better, here’s the location of another interesting potential field site, in northeast Syrtis:

Note the proximity to Jezero crater! And Syrtis is also a fantastic candidate for a sample return mission. It has exposed mesas with layered outcrops going all the way back to the earliest days of Mars, and extending (potentially) through many of the most interesting periods. Now, these are not ideal for the search for life, although they’d give us a ton of technical data about surface chemistry and the behavior of the atmosphere during the early, wet periods; it would go a long way towards resolving arguments about the temperature of the early Martian climate, for example, or tracing the early destabilization and loss of the magnetosphere while teaching us loads about the planet’s core.

Those mesas are still pretty far away. Too far, probably, for a sensible rover lifespan to make it all the way there. But there’s a plan- called the ‘Midway’ route, as a nod to the compromise nature of it. See, halfway between Jezero and these mesas, there are a lot of banded rocks that look suspiciously like they’re sourced from the table mesas in Syrtis. And those, we can get to, maybe. If we call a specific deadline on looking for life in Jezero, then we can pivot to Midway and hopefully take a really deep look. So, in the end, we’re going hard for astrobiology research, but we’re not going all-in.

The importance of the search for life is… well, there are a lot of people out there, and we enter the world in a lot of different ways. Most of us agree that the existence of extraterrestrial life would be a Big Deal, and we tend to have a lot of different reasons for that. It’s not a bad subject for a future post or three, in fact. But there’s one thing lurking in the back of my head that’s a non-obvious reason to go looking. This wasn’t discussed at the workshop particularly, but it fed into my vote somewhat. Check the logic of this for me, see if it makes sense:

Worrying about existential risks, we sometimes talk about the ‘great filter’. That is, the mysterious phenomenon which explains the lack of extraterrestrial civilizations reaching out to us. Now, maybe we’re in a zoo or a preserve or something, and intelligences are out there watching after all; maybe the Earth really is the center of the cosmos, because of the simulation hypothesis or the various religious explanations. There’s no real way to know for sure at this point. But consider the space of very real possibilities where the universe actually is material, and actually is mostly barren. Why?

Stepping through the sequence, it might be that abiogenesis is really hard- going from a temperate world to a living one is almost (but not quite) impossible. Maybe there’s some hurdle to clear between genesis and encephalization. Maybe, given encephalization, civilization and tool-use are almost impossible. Or maybe there are many civilizations like ours, and the great filter is ahead of us- it is almost impossible for technological civilizations not to self-destruct or turn in to lotus-eaters before they reach interstellar civilization. There are a lot of possibilities for the filter, and for present purposes we’ll divide them into two categories: those which we would have already passed, and those which are in our future.

And here’s the thing: for each possibility we can exclude from the great filter, all the other possibilities increase commensurately, becoming more likely in our estimation. (Assuming the exclusion is ‘clean’ and doesn’t favor some other possibility, that is.) Given that the silence continues, if we could somehow prove that technological self-destruction isn’t a big risk, that would commensurately increase our guesses about how hard abiogenesis is.

Life on Mars, especially if we could be very sure that it evolved independently of Earth life, would be a strong argument against the difficulty of abiogenesis. One biosphere in the solar system, and nowhere else, might be down to luck. The one biosphere has to be somewhere, right? Two in the solar system, and nowhere else, is a good bit less reasonable. If we find a second genesis on Mars, then we’ve learned that life is not rare. That the hundreds of billions of stars in the Milky Way are likely host to many billions of different living (or at least once-living) worlds.

And as wonderful as that news is, as much as it makes me so happy that I literally had to take a second to cry on my bed for a bit, it also makes the great silence much, much scarier. Today, we can reassure ourselves by saying that life may be rare in the universe. But what if it isn’t? If the cosmos is full of life, but not full of thought, then…

If this is the case, we need to know. We need to know as soon as possible, and we need to know it while we’re engaged in the great project of technological development and moral progress. It’s easy to imagine that this particular mission is one that can be framed in purely positive terms- the joy of discovery, the vastness of truth, the love of how things might be. But I do also have this sense of civilizational fragility, you know? And understanding the risks that we face and the chances we’re taking- that’s not idle curiosity. That’s genuinely urgent.

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magicman111 · 3 years

Text

A Moth to a Flame - Chapter Two

One month later

Sasha joylessly toyed with the Music Box, opening its lid like a yawning mouth.

Who’d have thunk it? She wondered to herself. This tacky little thing could cause so much calamity?

How ludicrously out of place she looked curled up on King Andrias’ enormous throne, almost like the little girl playing pretend in the driver’s seat of her parents’ car. You’d be forgiven for not knowing she’d just led the swiftest, easiest toppling of a government in this world’s history.

Big blue dummy locked up? Check. The city’s army surrendered? Check. Their toad army less than an hour away? Check. Dimension-skipping Macguffin firmly in their position? Double Check.

Not a bad day’s work for a 13-year-old.

Marcy’s oversized sparrow was tethered to the armrest by his leg. A prize she’d taken for herself so she could cruise around her new kingdom in style. She saw to it he wasn’t under any duress, and the fact he was neck deep in an industrial sized bag of bird feed told her he was plenty comfortable.

Sasha managed a tiny smile as she reached out to run her fingers through the thickness of his coat. She dunked her hand in the bag and offered him an open palm of seeds; he eyed for a moment or two before gingerly pecking at the mound.

Thank Frog no one was around to hear the ‘d’aww’ escape her lips.

Her grandmother was the one she had to thank for her secret admiration of birds. Old lady had been a birdwatcher who ‘treated’ her to regular weekend trips into the forest when she was younger. This was long before her discovery of malls and arcades. Sasha wouldn’t dare admit it to even herself back then, but the ones they spotted together on those dewy spring mornings were beautiful to behold in their natural habitat.

Herons may now be forever ruined for her, but Joe—she thought that was his name—was a mighty impressive specimen. Poor guy somehow found the strength to carry all seven of them to Newtopia, only to nosedive into the moat at the end of the flight.

Definitely had nothing to do with her asking Marcy if she could take the reins in the last stretch. She and Anne were kind enough not to draw attention to it, same as they did the day at summer camp when they discovered her crying into her pillow. They were awesome enough to go along with her story that it was only allergies. She knew she had a true pair of girlfriends that morning.

Thinking about them only soured her mood afresh. She sprinkled the rest of the feed back into the bag and slumped against the backrest, arms petulantly crossed.

Here she was in the crowning moment of her young life and she couldn’t have been more miserable.

Maybe because her friends should have been here to share in this, but no, they had to go and act all noble. What else should she have expected? She always was the only one in the group with the guts. Anne had to be dragged kicking and screaming to ditch school and join her and Marcy in celebrating her birthday. Was it any wonder she had to keep taking control of the situation?

More likely... it was because deep down she knew she didn’t really want this. She certainly believed she did after they dropped that gloryhound newt general down a waterfall and when they successfully rallied the Toad Lords after retrieving Barrel’s Warhammer. Things only started getting complicated when they needed free tickets into Newtopia in the form of her friends.

She hadn’t counted on realising just how much she missed her clumsy, klutzy Marcy. Neither how effectively she and Anne were still able to work together as a team in spite of all the unpleasantness that had transpired between them during their time here, of which there was plenty. The fact that Anne actively encouraged her in taking down that molten toad monster was the rancid cherry atop the sludge sundae. For a while back there, it looked like they might really turn a corner and start afresh. All three of them could have gone home like none of this ever happened. Except by then it was already too late.

What recourse did she have when the Plantars invited them for the world’s most awkward dinner party or when they brought the house down at the Battle of the Bands? Tell Grime and all the toads who’d invested their manpower and futures in her that sorry, she was getting cold feet? There was only one grizzly way that would end both for her and Grime and the best scenario she could imagine involved heads on pikes.

... It didn’t matter anymore. Her friends had picked their path, she’d picked hers. As her mom always said, ‘You make your bed, you lie in it’. Funny how in her short life, she’d heard that line far too many times already.

Once she figured out how the Box worked, she’d send both Anne and Marcy on their merry way and they’d never have to see each other ever again.

Everyone would get what they want.

Good thing then she’d sent her soldiers to ransack Marcy’s room for all her research about Anne’s fateful birthday gift. Girl was a pack rat. She kept notes for every exam and project they were assigned back home. The less said about her laptop jammed with files of anime fanfiction and theories the better.

Plus, it was a good way to try and distract herself.

They came back into the throne room hauling burlap sacks full of parchments and emptied their contents at Sasha’s feet.

Daaang, girl, you've been in the zone.

She scattered them over her lap and the ample free space on the seat. They actually weren’t that hard to follow; colour coordinated with plenty of cutesy kawaii diagrams. Trademark Marbles.

Apparently, it worked a lot like those puzzle boxes Marcy got as gifts from relatives in Hong Kong. All it took was knowing the right sequence of buttons and zip! You can go wherever you want in the cosmos. Just a matter of finding the code for Earth.

‘I’m done listening to you!

I’m done trusting you!’

Sasha scowled, trying to push the thoughts to the back of her mind where they belonged. She shuffled through a couple more pages until she found the one titled in glittery green and blue lettering, ‘HOME’.

Bingo.

‘You’re a horrible person!’

Ignore. Ignore.

Now all she had to do was jot it down on her palm and—

‘AND I AM DONE. BEING. FRIENDS WITH YOU!!’

She stopped. Her shoulders drooped. Then she just threw the page down on the floor and sunk into her seat further than she thought physically possible.

She normally didn’t consider herself that thin skinned a person, but man, that one hurt.

Traces of bitter tears creeped into her eyes.

What am I even doing anymore?

The sound of footsteps on crumpling paper and someone clearing their throat snapped her out of her self-pitying torpor. She fluttered her eyes dry to see Grime standing there awkwardly among the discarded parchments.

The diminutive, one-eyed former Toad Lord was hiding something behind his back. He actually looked pretty embarrassed about it too, which for a battle hardened war vet like Grime was actually kinda adorable in Sasha’s eyes.

“I, uhh, got you something,” he said, whipping out a long rectangular present wrapped in green paper and topped with a luscious red bow. “Had it made especially for this day.”

Now if there was one thing Sasha Waybright couldn’t say no to, it was a gift, especially from a trusted friend. They were the ultimate distraction from the blues and she couldn’t have been sitting upright and tearing into this one any quicker.

“Whaaat? Grimesy, you didn’t!” What she had pulled from the ravaged packaging wielded aloft her head made her gasp. “How’d you know I wanted to duel wield?!”

It was a brand new heron sword. An exquisite green second shortsword that would compliment Ol’ Pink perfectly.

She stared proudly into the smooth steel surface, admiring the craftsmanship. When she noticed the girl staring right back at her, however, her smirk vanished in an instant. The captain of the cheerleaders, the scarred swordswoman, the conqueror of Newtopia, whatever angle she looked at it, she didn’t like what she saw. Unbelievable as it may sound, even the joy of an awesome gift like this was not enough to make everything better.

“What’s the matter? You don’t like it? Oh dang it!” Grime slammed his forehead. “I didn’t get a gift receipt!”

“No no, it’s just...” Sasha weighed the blade against her ungloved palm. Talking about these kinds of things was never easy for her. “What if Anne’s right? What if I am a horrible person?”

Grime popped up like a whack-a-mole behind the armrest. “Who cares what she thinks?” he scoffed. “You and I are in charge now, and we get to do whatever we want!”

“That’s the thing... I’m not sure what I want anymore,” she admitted wearily.

For all his years of training at the finest academies, his brutal combat in the colosseum and tactical expertise earned through a lifetime of military service as his forebears before him, this one had Grime stumped. Needless to say, talking about one’s emotions wasn't exactly encouraged during their upbringing in toad culture, so naturally it wasn’t one of his strong suits. Just one of the many things he and Sasha had in common.

“Huh.”

Still, he was a pretty fast thinker and came up with a fairly good idea on the spot.

“Why don’t you help me redecorate this place?” he suggested, resting his hand on her shoulder. “Take your mind off it. Cuz this right here...” He gestured to the cluttered mess in which she’d surrounded herself. “This is definitely not—I’m sorry, can I help you?!”

Both of them turned their heads when it became impossible to ignore Joe’s cone-shaped beak lightly nipping at Grime’s cheek.

“He probably thinks your warts are seeds.”

“For the love of—I knew he was eyeing me up on the ride here! There! Get lost!” Grime scooped up a fistful of feed and flung it over the marble floor, but the winged beast persisted with pecking his face. “Stop it! MY HEAD IS NOT A FEEDER!!”

It took an exceptional effort of willpower for Sasha not to laugh at the sight of her old man being preyed upon by the family pet.

Wow, she thought. Her old man? Was that how she saw Grimesy now? Seriously?

Perhaps up to a point. Okay, considering the options she had for parental figures back home, it wasn’t exactly the highest bar to pass, but it still meant something. Anything.

Who would have guessed this would be how they’d end up, especially given how they started off with her as his prisoner? Sure, it may have taken her helping him and the whole tower not getting turned into heron feed for her to be upgraded to his lieutenant, but they really had come a long way since then. There was a lot more honor and heart to the cranky old toad than she first thought, back when she wrote him off just as another blowhard with power. Now he genuinely considered her his equal both as a friend and comrade in arms. For Sasha, the feeling was mutual. A first for her.

When all was said and done, who else did she have left besides him and vice versa?

What the heck? Let’s tear this place up.

Untethering Joe, she whistled a tweet-tweet and gave the rope a gentle tug to encourage him to follow on their ‘indoor walkies’.

A cursory surveillance of the throne room told her there was a lot of work to be done. If this toad regime was to last a thousand years, the correct decor was an important first step. Thankfully for them, she knew a thing or two about fashion. For starters, there were way too many soft blues and purples. Rust red from top to bottom! She preferred keeping the stained glass windows, but they’d need entirely new designs. Hers truly would naturally feature in most of them, one showcasing her and Grime caving that narwhal worm’s head in with the Warhammer being an absolute must. The snakes coiling the stone pillars weren’t a bad touch, if just a bit too elegant for the whole ‘proud warrior race’ vibe they were going for, but she could still work with them. Now as for the throne, they were gonna have to replace it with something much more imposing. There was that super violent dragon show she and her parents used to watch that had the huge throne made out of swords. She was sure she had a picture somewhere on her phone to use as a reference.

“I’m sorry, what the heck is this?!”

Sasha could only denounce what they were gawking at as the single biggest affrontement to tasteful decorating known to man or amphibian. Yes, worse than inflatable furniture, carpeted bathrooms, beaded curtains, glass block bathroom windows, ‘live, laugh, love’ quotes on walls, rustic hearts, mason jars and nautical accessories all combined under the same inland roof.

Tapestries had their rightful place in a palace’s interior design, but the one sweeping across a section of wall depicting a gentle hearted Andrias sitting down by a lake, surrounded by flowers and lilypads was nothing short of vomit-inducing. Gathered at his feet and scooped up in his protective arms were his wide-eyed, childlike subjects. Even the fish and a lobster were surfacing to bask in their king’s magnanimity. Here the oversized salamander was truly the loving patriarch of everything the light touched. The mawkish display could only be topped off with a rainbow streaking across the sky.

Grime felt his stomach roile. If he ever needed an example to demonstrate the difference between kitschy and downright tacky, this was it.

“Y-y-y-yikes!” he gagged. “This thing’s gotta go!”

Sasha didn’t need a second invite. Besides, what else was Joe going to use to line his nest?

A joint effort tore the offensive piece from its place and it tumbled to the floor in a heap.

Dead silence fell over the room.

Hidden beneath the tapestry was... a mural. Including such a decoration in a throne room was hardly surprising, yet it was what it contained that shocked both the human and toad, so much so that they had to take a moment to recover.

“Woah,” they gasped at once, before starting to analyse what they saw.

The mural was a chaotic collection of nightmarish images painted on a night blue wall. Wild red flames spewing out hordes of beasts and the wreckage of buildings. Mountains of skulls and bones belonging to frogs, toads and newts alike. A flying... spaceship? A castle? Whatever it was meant to be, it firied a white beam up at what was unmistakably the Music Box. Pink, green and blue lightning bolts crackled out of the Box. Mesmerising orange gemstones or, more terrifyingly, eyes leaped off the wall and burned themselves into their minds. The frightening focal point of this one-way ticket to the school therapist’s office? Rising out of the middle of the inferno was the silhouette of a red-eyed, goliath-sized beast, its claws reaching up covetously towards the Box that hung right above its crowned head.

It may as well have been lifted straight from the tattered dream journal of a madfrog.

Any ideas of redecorating the throne room were long gone. Even the revolution they were spearheading suddenly seemed millions of miles away in the face of what they’d just stumbled upon.

Peering her eyes slightly, Sasha was the first to put a face to the shadowy leviathan, and when she did, she had to swallow her heart back down into her chest.

“Is that the king?” she asked, mystified. “With the music box?”

Sweat ran down the side of Grime’s nonplussed face. “If it is… it’s a really good thing we stopped him.”

Neither of them said it aloud, but both understood the situation at once. All this time they thought they’d been playing flipwart while the king played bog jump. Oh, how wrong they’d been. It was beyond anything that even the Toad Lords discussed. They knew that they had to reconvene with them as soon as the armies had reached the gate.

She took a couple steps closer to reexamine the mural more thoroughly, missed details emerging now that the initial shock began to wear off. Circuit board markings—the same inside her dad’s outdated computer when she foolishly dared Marcy if she could take it apart—worked their way around the images, serving as some type of frame. Odd choice for a world that didn’t even have steam engines yet. She also picked up the three small geometric figures standing atop the Box’s lid. An artist she was not, but they looked pretty human-like in design.

But humans did not exist in Amphibia. The three of them were the first of their kind to ever set foot in this dimension.

Weren’t they?

Alarm bells were ringing louder than ever before. This Andrias guy had been playing Anne and Marcy for his own ends this whole time, all to get his mitts on the Music Box! What did he plan to do with it? Right now, she still couldn’t say, but it was all bad. Outside of a kickin’ rock band, fire and skulls together were never a good thing!

Even Joe’s feathers were puffing up anxiously against her back. Not turning away from the mural, she raised her hand and patted his risen crest.

“I know, big guy. I don’t like it either.”

Grime’s voice rang urgently in her ears, “Lieutenant! Get over here, quick!!”

Sasha had spun on her heels and sprinted down the room to find Grime standing the wreckage of what used to be a display of armour. He’d evidently acted on a hunch while she’d been preoccupied. Judging by his thunderstruck expression, he’d just discovered something far worse.

“What is iooooh boy!”

This new second mural reminded Sasha a lot of Egyptian hieroglyphs. If there was any room for doubt about the technicolor stick guys, there was none here. Standing tall against an indigo backdrop in a neat row were the outlines of human beings; long gangly appendages, stumpy noses and everything. Some were wearing hooded capes, others were decked out in suits of armour. The couple in the middle looked particularly regal. No prizes for guessing the little wooden box they were holding in their hands, cementing their authority as if it were the globus cruciger.

Faded inscriptions were engraved along the bottom. They were written in a more archaic amphibian dialect, but being a toad of higher education, Grime was able to give translating them a decent shot.

These great beings of magic and might

Travelled from beyond to serve the night

Bow before these children of man

Or know the wrath of the—

“... Wu Clan?” He cocked his one good eye up at her. “Iiiii’m not getting it.”

There it was. Floodlights flashed in Sasha’s head. All colour drained from her face. A million and one thoughts were now firing across her brain at once, threatening to send her into cerebral shutdown.

It was at that moment she knew she’d been played. They all had. She didn’t know whether to be absolutely furious, betrayed or impressed.

Why that conniving, devious little—

That's when they heard the BOOM outside the window.

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alderaani · 3 years

Text

Embers

summary: After Umbara, Boil learns how to endure, and how to reclaim pieces of his brothers marching on | AO3 | series

warnings: canonical character death, grief, animal injury + mentions of animal death (completely not explicit, on the level of canon-typical violence).

a/n: finally another part of my 100 clone prompts - the rest of the series is linked above! i know there’s not much in canon to support Waxer being an animal lover, but i wanted to give Gree a friend to nerd out with and it’s cute. also gotta pay homage to @nibeul’s wonderful art here - while I wasn’t consciously inspired by it, it hits on v similar themes and is just beautiful like...that image of waxer holding up numa lives in my head rent free.

Insects swirled in a halo around his helmet. They swarmed around the seams of his blacks, too, attracted to the small beads of sweat there, to the tiny strips of flesh he couldn’t quite cover. The rising bites itched, rubbing where the edge of his vambraces met fabric, and the buzzing was enough to drive a man mad. Boil sighed, brushing them off half-heartedly and watching them billow angrily away. They’d be back. They always were.

In the reprieve, he fumbled at his belt for the viewfinders hooked there and brought them to his visor. As he spun the dial to within half a klik so that he could search the undergrowth, his thumb settled in the comforting groove where Waxer had dropped them and chipped the plastoid. He worried at it with his nail while he scanned, frowning.

It was too still.

Too quiet.

Had been in his head for weeks now, verging on a month, and he was still waiting to feel something other than crippling emptiness. There weren’t any dreams any more, none except for the oldest one they all pretended not to have; levelling a blaster against Kenobi’s head and pulling the trigger. Even that didn’t feel like the nightmare it used to.

Eventually he lowered the viewfinder, feeling the hair stand up on the back of his neck at the stifled sound of his own breath in the dense air. A faint, humid breeze stirred the leaves, sending a cloud of thick yellow pollen up towards the canopy. Boil blinked to bring up the filter diagnostic on his HUD, keeping his belly low to the ground to avoid the stuff as it drifted lazily overhead.

“Kid, you doin’ alright out there?”

He listened to the static hum of the comm line for a few moments, biting back the panic that crawled up the back of his throat when it dragged on just a beat too long.

“Apart from gettin’ gnawed on by the bugs? Just grand, Sir.”

Potshot sounded a little winded, but that was probably just the heat. Blacks self-regulated temperature, but only to the extent that they made sure you sweated evenly. It never used to be quite so bad; that had been the one thing Phase 1 armour had going for it, for all it was bulkier and less adaptable to varied terrain. He supposed the Republic had had to cut costs somewhere. Waxer would’ve been whining by now that his ass was so hot they could light a flare off it. Potshot was young enough that he’d never known any different.

“Good, you see anything?” Boil grunted, pinging his location anyway. There was no real reason for it; Potshot might’ve still been green but he wasn’t stupid, and he’d done well to keep up so far. Boil could stand being self aware enough to acknowledge that he hadn’t been the most welcoming, or the most patient with the new partner he’d never wanted. He wouldn’t have had any right to be overbearing now, but it was for his own comfort, however small and bittersweet.

“Nothin’ at all. That seem odd to you too?” Potshot said, as the surveillance holos he’d taken popped up. Boil flipped through them, earmarking a couple to show him how to improve the angle later. The important shit was all there - enough to confirm what he’d already suspected. No birds, no creatures, no fresh droppings.

Just the bugs, and the trees, and them.

“Yeah, it’s odd alright. Think we’ve found what the general’s looking for.”

Boil felt pressure around his right boot and turned, vibroblade in hand, to stab into the fleshy vine knotting round it. It writhed and retreated, leaving behind pitted, smoking trails where acid had started eating into the plastoid. He registered the damage with a dull sort of annoyance. It was something else to take care of later, a way to look busy and shape the silence. It would fend off the others and their offers of company, made out of pity he couldn’t bear to look at.

“Really? What’re you seein’, boss?” Potshot asked.

Boil glanced upwards to track the position of the sun; high, almost directly overhead. At the peak of the day this place should have been teeming. Instead the only tracks he’d found had been baked solid, and this wasn’t the shocked quiet that followed a stampede. It was stagnant, aging.

“This forest is in the centre of an old super-volcanic crater, right?” he asked, not waiting for a response. It had been in the mission dossier, alongside profiles of the flesh eating plants, the deadly pollen and the venomous creatures, all of it fenced into the sloped, unforgiving bowl of the terrain. It was the kind of forest that stuck in the mind. “And we know that something has driven the wildlife away.”

Potshot hummed, the comm muffling for a second as he shifted. It took a moment of bitter disappointment coiling in Boil’s belly for him to realise that he’d been waiting for a sharp quip that wasn’t coming. He swallowed thickly, wondering how it was possible to feel so wrongfooted while lying down. If he’d ever find his balance again. If he ever wanted to feel whole now that such a fundamental piece was missing.

Potshot groaned suddenly. “Kriff it, the factories we’re looking for are underground, aren’t they?”

Boil forced a chuckle, choking past the self hatred clawing up through his lungs. The kid deserved better, deserved a superior who didn’t constantly treat him like a ghost.

“That’s it, kid. Just like the simulations, eh?”

Potshot laughed, the easy sound making Boil’s throat seize in longing so strong his teeth ached. Waxer would’ve loved him, and that made it all the worse.

“Hardly. What do we do next?”

“Alright,” Boil said, lifting the viewfinder for one last look at where he could see slight fog rising through the trees. “You get your ass back to forward command and debrief the General, I’m heading in for a closer look.”

“ What? But - Sir! We’re supposed to be working as a team. I can’t leave you -”

“Sometimes working as a team means you do your duty and trust the others to do theirs.” He cut in, keeping his voice steady by force of will. Sometimes, it meant carrying on alone. Boil clipped the viewfinder back into place and prepared to move, even as Potshot continued protesting. Boil didn’t answer for long enough that silence fell on the line.

“...am I not performing to the standard expected, Sir?”

Potshot’s voice was soft, all vulnerable underbelly. Still so shiny, and Boil remembered feeling like that, like there was still a scorecard constantly on his forehead.

“No - kid -” Boil sighed, dropping his head forward. He’d never learned how to be gentle - it hadn’t ever come naturally, and there had been no reason to lose his sharp edges when Waxer had always been there to foil them for him. He felt sharper now than ever, full of shards that didn’t sit right, and fished among the pieces for something his brother might have said. “I trust you to have my back. You’re doing everything right. But...sometimes we’ve gotta think of the mission. We need more proof before we can move in, but the two of us get caught, command loses what we already know.”

“Can’t we just send a comm?” Potshot asked, his voice still tight and hurt sounding and he was fucking this up, shouldn’t have been trusted to try to fix himself without breaking everyone else wide open in the process.

“Don’t trust it not to get intercepted,” Boil said, which was only half a lie, and would have made Cody scoff at the back to front over-caution. “And it don’t all fit in a comm. They’ll need everything you can remember to plan the advance.”

Potshot sighed, but when he spoke again his voice was looser. “...Yes, Sir. I won’t let you down.”

“I know you won’t,” Boil said, feeling his own chest lighten. “If you don’t hear from me by 1100 then raise me on the priority channel.”

He listened until Potshot had stated a reluctant affirmative and clicked off the line, then bellied out of the undergrowth and headed further in, to the epicentre of the unnatural quiet. He liked the way his mind went silent on recon, how everything else fell away. It wasn’t quite the same, tilted just a little off axis, but similar enough to when it had been Waxer at his six that if he didn’t think about it, he could almost trick himself into believing nothing had changed.

Plus, the space was good, just for a few minutes, where he didn't have to pretend for anyone.

It was a quiet journey, for the most part, punctuated only by the steps he couldn’t quite muffle. His thoughts were broken some time later when he suddenly heard it; the distant mechanical boom of something deep underground. He quickened his pace, following the vibrations until the earth under his feet grew hot, the air shimmering unnaturally in front of him. It had been like this at Point Rain, when the sand baked and glinted, glass-like, under the blaze of the overhead sun. If he hadn’t known the super-volcano was very thoroughly extinct, he could have kidded himself that it was just the geothermal energy of magma moving close to the surface. A clever disguise. But not clever enough.

The ground sloped ever downwards the further into the bowl he got. He watched where he placed his feet as it grew rockier, stones and small craters acting like pitfall traps concealed by the moss. Boil pinged his scanner every minute, searching for Seppie probes as the terrain tapered, falling away into a green-rimmed yawning abyss. Set into the centre of it was a huge grate, the source of the searing air. Here were the factories they’d been looking for, exactly where he’d suspected. It was a muted sort of satisfaction.

He crouched at the edge of the drop, taking holos and transmitting them directly to the Commander’s HUD. Then he checked his chrono and sent an unapologetic follow up that he’d be late to rendezvous, seeing that 1100 was about to come and go. Then he minimised the comms on his HUD to flash for priority only; he’d get bollocked for being late sooner or later, but he figured it would be novel to have it fully in person.

Finally he turned, ready to start the rapid scale back towards the 212th's forward camp, when he registered a low, keening whine.

His blaster was in his hands within a moment, trained at the knee-high leaves. The sound came again, higher this time, followed by laboured panting.

He gently brushed aside some of the foliage with his blaster barrel. Dark eyes stared at him from between the leaves. They both froze. It was some sort of animal, obviously; a mammal, probably a predator. It was small too, with paws too large for its scrawny body and a dark, downy fur that rippled with every laboured breath.

Sharp teeth. A narrow muzzle. A long, whip-like tail.

A vornskr, Boil thought, and hated how readily the identification came, how readily he tensed in anticipation of the inevitable Boil can you see - do you know how rare -

He shook the memories away, of Waxer leaning precariously over the top bunk to wave some manual Commander Gree had sent him in his face, bleating about some animal or species that Boil couldn’t pronounce. In the present the vornskr pup cowered away from him, pushing backwards on thin, spindly legs. Deceptively powerful though, he’d bet.

The creature let out another whine and stumbled, an odd abortive movement. Boil pressed more of the leaves away to get a better look and swore when he saw the brutal metal trap closed around one of its small hind legs, paring down to bone. His blaster was up and trained on the thing before he thought much about it. Better to shoot it, put it out of its misery, than prolong its suffering. It was what they did as part of the cleanup sometimes; wildlife was usually pretty good at getting out of the active battlefronts, but there were always stragglers. The too old or the too young, mostly.

Creatures like this one.

The vornskr stilled, staring at him with those big, wide eyes as if it knew exactly what he was thinking. Boil swallowed. Waxer wouldn’t have let him shoot it. Waxer also wasn’t here now to stop him, but Boil felt his arm lower all the same, just a few inches before he pulled the trigger. The vornskr yelped as the trap hinges came apart in two neat halves and immediately tried to run. It didn’t get very far before it collapsed, panting again.

Boil sighed and shook his head, holstering his blaster across his back.

“That was a stupid thing to do,” he tsked, shuffling closer.

He kept half an eye on the tail, remembering something about it being venomous. While being high off his ass on some unknown substance had the potential to make Cody’s dressing down more interesting, it might also kill him before he got there.

The vornskr growled as he leaned over it, baring needle sharp teeth, and made a snap at him when Boil reached out.

“Ah, give over,” he muttered, batting the attempt away. The little body was light in his hands as he lifted it, careful to let the injured leg hang out as he folded it into his chest. The vornskr made an odd, throaty sound and shifted, almost experimental. Then it huffed, and after a pause laid its head across his vambrace.

Boil rolled his eyes at the display, setting off towards forward command as soon as he was halfway sure he wasn’t in danger of losing a finger.

It was...nice, to have that little body cradled to him, reminiscent of better occasions when Waxer just had to stick his nose into every curious happening and inevitably adopted some struggling lifeform. However much Boil had complained, it had never steered them wrong.

When he got back to command it was to find Cody pacing the perimeter, Potshot perched on a crate nearby. The Commander’s bucket was under his arm. Boil winced. With Cody that was never an accident - usually so he could get the full weight of a glare in, the excavating kind he’d learned from Kenobi and then weaponised so that it pierced straight down to bone.

“Boss!” Potshot exclaimed, pushing off his seat. “You made it!”

“What time d’you call this?” Cody demanded, stalking over. “I was about to -”

Cody stopped short, gaze dropping to the furry bundle against Boil’s breastplate. Something in his expression softened and Boil felt in his heart, panicking as a lump rose in his throat.

“What’s that?” Cody asked.

Boil let his gaze slide downwards to a point far beyond, where two troopers were fighting over a tarp.

“Found it in a trap,” he said, his voice ragged. “Couldn’t - couldn’t let it die.”

He flicked his eyes back to Cody’s face and breathed through the grief and understanding he found there. Cody stepped forward and clasped Boil’s elbow.

“I’m sure Tranq will be able to do something for it.” A little upturn crept into the line of Cody’s lips. “Debrief in fifteen.”

Boil nodded and broke away, tipping his head to Potshot before clearing his throat roughly and popping his bucket off one-handed as he made his way to the medtent. The sun was warm on his face here, the air lighter. A butterfly flew lazily past and the vornskr lifted its head, tracking the motion with large, interested eyes.

Boil smiled, hoisting his bucket under one arm and daring to touch the creature's head with his freed hand. It wouldn’t ever bring Waxer back, but it meant something that this little life continued, because of the choices his brother would have made and all that he had been. Like the phantom touch of the sun still lingering in cooling earth.

It wouldn’t ever be enough. But, perhaps, it was just the right amount to cling onto.

taglist // @nelba @leias-left-hair-bun @simping-for-fives @iscream4clones @bad-batch-of-fics @battletales @majorshiraharu @dom-i-nic @snippytano @missinashkin @808tsuika @eries45 @lussyyung @whatanoof // join here

#clone trooper waxer #clone trooper boil #original clone characters #clone oc potshot #commander cody #212th attack battalion #the clone wars #star wars #the clone wars fanfiction #alderwrites

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adsosfraser · 3 years

Text

The Stone’s Toll - Chapter Ten

Read on AO3

“We can’t stay here.”

“No, we can’t.” Jamie pulled his wife onto his bare chest. “And wee Hamish has sent a letter, requesting his cousin’s aide. Though he was vague on which, I’m sure he wasna comfortable writing Jamie Fraser on something the English could see.”

“So we go to Leoch with Fergus?”

“I willna put ye in danger, the travel there will be treacherous now wi’ the English on our throats everywhere.”

“Well, I’m certainly not leaving you, James Fraser. Have you forgotten I’m wanted too? We go together. And, with us gone, Lallybroch will be safer, we’ll be safer for a while. But…”

“What is it Sassenach?”

“I know you and the sea aren’t close friends, but ports shouldn’t be as monitored as they were right after Culloden. The islands will be safer, Charles even fled to the Isle of Skye to go to France. In the future, some islands are even able to retain some of their culture, their tartan. We can always go there, it would be safer while we wait… for a pardon.”

“A pardon?” He was shocked.

“Yes. When I returned I placed three letters in the post at Inverness. Copies of historical letters I assume. They may give us the freedom we want.”

A sharp breath escaped his lips and he slumped back on the chair. “Christ, a pardon. You know how well that went the last time.”

“But this time there’s no more war, we’re done with that horror.”

“Aye, we’ll seek Hamish, then if we canna stay, we’ll bide on one of the wee islands.”

“What’s this about ye up and leaving Jamie Fraser! And dinna think I’m not cross wi’ ye too Claire!”

“Jenny,” Claire took her hand, “you know it isn’t safe for us to stay here. We got lucky the last time.”

“And I’ll no’ have my wife sleeping in a cave.”

“Well, ye two eejits could at least wait ‘til yer goddaughter is christened! Ye dinna ha’ to leave wi’ yer tails tucked between yer legs so soon.”

“Goddaughter.” Her heart warmed and she squeezed Jenny’s arm.

“I ken yer already her aunt, but ye’d make a fine goddaughter to the lass. I suppose that would make yer daft husband her godfather. Puir lass.” She feigned pity for the tiny girl in her arms. “Would the both o’ ye wait, jes’ one more day?”

Claire looked back at Jamie but already knew their answer. “Of course.”

The ceremony was brief, the priest wasn’t prepared to perform it so soon. Caitlin gurgled up at Claire in her arms. The holy water was sprinkled over her tiny forehead in the small kirk near Lallybroch. Other than the slight cry from the chill of water, Caitlin was a perfect baby. The Frasers and Murrays all joined back together to Lallybroch to celebrate. They enjoyed a small stew of rabbit and potato, the most filling one in weeks. Father Ross had the death certificate for Fergus ready to sign, but on seeing the boy alive and healthy, he walked towards the fire in the Great Room.

“Wait,” Claire shouted to his back. “Don’t burn it. Jenny, will you sign that?”

“He’s clearly no’ deid Claire, are ye off yer heid?”

“No, it’s just, it’s important that the document isn’t destroyed. I can’t explain how.”

“Verra weel.” She plucked it out of the Father’s hands and went off to the study. She mumbled, knowing long ago not to question her sister's strange nature.

Claire had ripped through the fabric of her dresses and the contents of her leather bag to pull out every piece of gold, silver, and jewellery that was left during the hours waiting for Father Ross. It was little less than three years’ salary in her time, but now it would support Lallybroch for years to come. She dumped it all out on the dining and the jewels, gold, and silver scattered and clattered against the wood surface. She had put away some for her and Jamie of course, enough to be comfortable on their journey, but even with the small dent into the funds on the table, it was still an astounding sum. Jamie spied her wedding ring on a chain within the pile and raised a brow to her, but she shrugged her shoulders in reply.

“A christening gift.”

Everyone at the table stared dumbfounded at the treasure disorganised on the table. A ‘Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ’ was supplied by her son.

“How Claire?” Ian piped up.

“I didn’t steal it if that’s what you're asking.”

“Well, how on earth did ye find so much?” Jenny yelled, exasperated.

“It was my inheritance from my parents and uncle. And the man whose advances I turned down…gave some of it to me.”

“Jesus, Mary, and Bride, ye’ve been hiding this away all this time?”

“No, I’ve just recently acquired it myself. But now, it can be put to good use instead of rotting in some bank. Take it, Jenny, use it to save Lallybroch from the famine, clearances, and drought to come.”

Jenny planted a sloppy kiss onto Claire’s cheek and handed Caitlin over to Ian. She grabbed her arms and began jumping excitedly. Claire even thought she heard a squeal from the small woman. Displays of affection from the woman were rare, and Claire felt so happy and touched that she included her in it.

“Claire ye have no idea how this will help us.”

“I have some idea.”

Their packing was done, and the horses were all lined up for the journey. Jenny embraced Claire, and she was reminded of the parting before Culloden all over again.

“Ye come back to us sister,” she raised her voice to a shout so Jamie could hear, “I dinna care much if this oaf does.”

“I love ye too Janet.” He pulled her from Claire into a giant hug.

“Och, ye ken I love ye too, a bràithair. Now, try to come back to us as quick as ye can. Lallybroch will be missing her Laird.”

A plant along the trail made Claire pause. It was a forget me not, and though it was only the beginning of March, it was blooming brilliantly against the grass of the glen. It couldn’t have been a coincidence that they were so close to the standing stones when she found it. She knew they needed to go back together, for closure. So she jumped off her horse and scooped her hands into the dirt.

“Jamie I want to go to Craigh na Dun before we stop into Inverness.”

Jamie pulled back on the reins of his horse and stalled in the middle of the path before Claire. He looked down at his wife and the flowers in her hands.

“If you don’t want to that’s fine, I just wanted to plant these there, and we might never get another chance to do so.”

“Aye, we’ll go.”

He dismounted his horse in one swift move. Carefully, Jamie helped Claire back up to her horse without crushing the delicate flowers in the process. Jamie passed the reins of his own horse to his son and climbed up behind his wife on her mare.

“Fergus, be a good lad and find a place to shelter in Inverness. Something not too in the open, or conspicuous either.” Jamie pulled out the bag of coins and tossed it to him.

“Oui, milord. I shall not fail you.”

Milord and papa, milady and maman, had become as interchangeable to Fergus as Jamie’s Sassenach, mo gràidh, mo nighean donn, and the countless other affectionate names he could come up with for his wife.

“Now off wi’ ye son, we’ll be shortly after.”

They held tight to each other, not able to bear even a second of lost connection. Fog clung to the air surrounding the tall monoliths and blocked the vision to the moor below.

“I wish I could punch it. But it won’t even let me do that.”

“How about this one to the side. Not too much danger of falling in fer yer wee hand.”

She pulled slightly apart from him for the first time since they created the hi together. Her arm trembled as she reached out to lightly touch the stone closest to the centre one. Though it had become an unwitting victim of its brother’s actions, it would have to do. Lining up her arm, she delivered the first blow that jolted from the cold surface to the bones of her arm and shoulders

“Fuck you!” She screamed a gut-wrenching cry as she slammed her fist into the rock. “Fuck you! Fuck!”

Her breath hitched and Jamie gathered her once again in his arms. He kissed her skinned knuckles. Giving her a few minutes to calm her racing heart and heaving lungs, Jamie cradled her tight to his chest, one arm under her knees and the other supporting her back. How many more tears would she cry, for something that was only the size of a blueberry? She knew she’d never lose the feeling of grief, but it would become more manageable most days. With her husband there to bear it with her, she knew it would be a certainty.

“I’m ready.” She patted his chest. “Are you?”

“Aye.”

“Do you want to punch it too?”

“No, that bastard stone’s taken too much from us. I won’t give it the satisfaction of flesh and blood from my hands as weel.”

She wanted to reach out and cradle the voice she had once heard to her chest, protect her against the violence of the stones. But it seemed it was her daughter instead who protected her. Digging the small hole into the ground by the outer stones, she smiled tearfully. Jamie’s strong hands were right beside hers, guiding the dirt away. Together they scooped the small plant into their hands, a mismatch of Jamie’s on top of Claire’s and then Claire’s on top of Jamie’s. They patted the dirt mound and encased the stems in the nutrients. With the task finished, Claire fell into Jamie’s lap and began to weep. She stroked his shirt with dirtied hands and left stains on the white linen. He rubbed the fabric on her back and Claire felt the moisture fall onto her hair and slowly down to her scalp. She offered him her sgian dubh and he etched into the centre stone with sharp angles, leaving the blade there as a gift. Baby Fraser. Claire’s hand trembled in his grip and she was almost consoled by the fact that she could feel his shaking too; he didn’t hide how it affected him as well. “I trust yer grandsire and grandmam are keeping ye out o’ trouble a leannan . I love you. Tell Faith I love her too, and I ken she protects ye up there, but jes’ because she’s older doesna mean ye canna protect her as weel. Jes’ like I do fer yer auntie. Ye mind what yer family says, and we’ll meet again soon enough.”

Claire knelt down and gently cradled the small flower in her hand. “I love you, my baby girl. We love you so much.”

Jamie ripped off a strip from his sark and wrapped it around her bloodied knuckles with a kiss. They stayed to talk to the stone for a while. Jamie laughed with Claire after sharing an incident from his boyhood about a goat, some string, a bucket of shite, and his sister. Claire pulled out the photos from within her pockets and shared her child-self to their daughters, and the interesting marvels of the future. Jamie was proud he recognised the ‘airyplane’ from when Claire brought out the black and white pictures in the cave. He was bewildered of course at first, cursing the strange magic, but once he saw the brilliant smile of his Sassenach he knew the depiction couldn’t hold any evil. He especially liked seeing her as a bairn, with pigtails and a pink frilly dress and how the photos showed the change from cute baby to mature woman. She set one into the plastic wrap, a photo of her, her parents, and her uncle and buried it beneath the earth.

“Your family is with you always, my darling girl.”

With one last glance, they rode back to Inverness holding each other on the saddle.

Their short stay in Inverness was that: short. After the first night of full bellies and a warm fire, the innkeeper alerted the travellers to the presence of redcoats fifteen miles away. It gave them time to prepare themselves, instead of another hasty retreat to Leoch.

It was not nearly as strong of a fortress as it had once been.

Claire was put to use straight away, mending flesh and bone. Jamie was spirited away as well to advise his cousin in the Laird’s Tower. The only bright spot was the wonderful Mrs. Fitz. Fergus spent much of his time messing around the surgery and playing with the medicines, much to Claire’s annoyance. No matter how many times he insisted it would not happen again, his nimble little fingers were constantly filching items off of shelves and tables. So she sent him off to the kitchens.

The ledgers had become impossible, and Leoch was close to ruin from partially funding the Jacobite cause. They felt the sharp absence of those who had fought bravely alongside them. None were left. Most of the men residing in the lands were either too old, too young, or too crippled to fight. There was talk of taking up a deal with the British, to leave Leoch and settle somewhere comfortable in America. Hamish was inclined to that option more and more each day. The Lairdship was not an easy thing for a twelve-year-old, let alone under such stress of a post-war climate. So, it was decided that the MacKenzies would sell Leoch to the British for land somewhere deep in Virginia. As much as it pained them to leave their culture and homeland in the hands of those bastards, they had no other choice. The lands produced nothing, the woodlands sparse, and their supplies pilfered by roaming soldiers. Claire felt guilty for the small amount of gold tucked into her dresses, but she told herself the amount she was left with couldn’t save them all. They stayed in constant communication with Jenny through letters and informed her of their impending move. Jenny wrote back to her cousins, Alexander and Elizabeth Malcolm , just as often, if not more eager to know they were safe.

In the blistering heat of the summer, Claire, Jamie, and Fergus travelled in the safety of the band of MacKenzies. Virtually no redcoats bothered them on their way, patriot to king and country as the Laird most certainly was in their eyes.

At Ullapool, they said their last goodbyes as they split to different destinations. Jamie couldn’t possibly survive a month-long journey across the water. They purchased passage on the Serendipity and waited.

Jamie wretched off the side of the gangway as the ship made port. Stornoway, and from there they would hopefully find somewhere to settle down. A croft, north of Stornoway soon came to their attention. Most of their money went to purchase the land outright, they weren't too keen to rent one out as other crofters did, knowing the clearances would hit Scotland hard. So, Alexander Malcolm, his wife, and his son, began to build a home out of the small abandoned cottage. They hoped it would be temporary but would be fine if it wasn’t, for they had all they needed already: each other.

#jamie fraser #jamie x claire #craigh na dun #outlander fanfiction #fergus fraser #hamish mackenzie #castle leoch #stornoway #ullapool #adsofraser writing #canon divergence #jenny murray #ian murray #claire beauchamp #outlander fanfic

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cybernaght · 3 years

Text

Guardian rewatch: Episode 5

I thought this would be a shorter recap. Ha!

Every now and then throughout this show we are getting CGI wide shots of the Dragon City, mostly establishing the time of day. They have three settings: nighttime, daytime, and sunset/sunrise. While quality-wise those wide shots would not feel out of place in a video game from ten years ago, with buildings looking all rubbery, I actually really like this sunset sky. I also appreciate that they firmly establish that this is city is not, in fact, a real place. I almost wish the architecture was a little bit less familiar, but making the city look truly otherworldly here would make location scouting much harder. As it happens, the buildings on the forefront have a very 60’s art deco revival inspired feeling, and there are some distinctively neoclassical buildings peppered around as well. We can also see that the roads are very wide, and generally there is a hint of Stalinist grandioseness about the downtown. Unfortunately, it looks nothing like the locations and sets the characters are running in; we also get a feeling that the Dragon City is very large, which is not entirely consistent with the very few locations that were available when shooting the series. This shot does, however, remind me the city I grew up in (Moscow).

The actual plot of the episode centres around Huang Linqi and his fiancé, Li Jiaqi, going missing - it will be important, because their disastrous wedding will produce the most Clark Kent moment that Shen Wei will ever have. We also meet the parents of the couple, who are stinking rich and extremely unpleasant. It also introduces us to Butler Wu (Wu Tian’en) and his son, who will become important in later episodes. Butler Wu is not actually the villain of the piece, despite this shot clearly telling us otherwise.

Back at the university, Shen Wei is having a morning tea with his dean. He holding his teacup with almost god-like elegance, very close to actually covering his mouth when he drinks, which is extremely old-fashioned. This is in stark contrast with him brazenly and un-gentlemanly showing his ankles.

Shen Wei is asked to move off campus, because, apparently, having a chief of the special task force showing up at your office is bad for the reputation. Since the professor does not look surprised, and states that he has already found a flat, I’m guessing that he was clever enough to have predicted this turn of events, and used it to secure the place a breath away from Zhao Yunlan. It is up to speculation as to when he started scouting for an apartment: it could not have been more than a few weeks since he met Zhao Yunlan, and finding a flat can take a while.

At the SID office, we are treated to a lovely moment between the team members, crowding around Lin Jin’s new invention: a popcorn-specific microwave.

It’s very sweet to see the team indulge in some nonsense outside of their case work, made even better by Wang Zheng being there. The fact that Zhao Yunlan is on board with his department’s time and resources being spent on a popcorn maker only makes this scene better. He is crouching on the table, because chairs are for the weak.

After inspecting the crime scene, Zhao Yunlan is spending some time outside chatting to Buttler Wu, and comments on Li Jiaqi’s good looks, since Zhao Yunlan is a man who can appreciate beauty.

As Xiao Guo is awe-struck at his boss’ ability to note someone’s prettiness from a distance, Chu Shuzhi literally rolls his eyes calling those “instincts of a beast”, and Zhao Yunlan fails to reprimand him for the remark, because… fair enough. Very fair enough. It’s hard not to relate to Zhao Yunlan, a self-admitted bi disaster.

Shen Wei is being shown his new apartment. He does not even look around it, staring instead at Zhao Yunlan’s front door across the hall from him.

Moving here is a completely senseless thing to do. How on earth is he planning to hide his Hei Pao Shi persona while being a next door neighbour to the chief of SID? My conclusion is that from a character stand-point, it’s nothing but an act of desperate devotion; from a narrative stand-point, this codifies that their relationship is about to get very intimate indeed.

The SID members are interrogating Buttler Wu: as is often the case, instead of bringing him in, like they did with Shen Wei, they hijack a cafe nearby to have a more relaxed conversation. As they talk, Shen Wei is making his way past the cafe, which both Wu Tian'en and Shen Wei notice.

Shen Wei proceed to follow Butler Wu, who calls him out on it. This leads to a removal of his glasses so epic it warrants a jump-cut to close-up, on top of the dutch angle used mere seconds prior to it.

Instantly recognizing Shen Wei as Hei Pao Shi, Wu Tian’en sinks to his knees in reverence. Again, fair enough. After having a brief conversation about their shared history, Shen Wei states that Butler Wu is not allowed to lay a hand on Zhao Yunlan.

“Chief Zhao? You’re stalking him?”

“You don’t need to know more.”

That is not a no. Mostly because that is a yes.

Shen Wei promises to not take Wu Tian’en away before the man resolves his current problems, adding that he hopes his old acquaintance won’t have any regrets when that happens. As Shen Wei walks away, he muses “Then how much time is there left for me?”

(And I have to fight an uncomfortable sinking feeling in my stomach, which is occurring a lot as I rewatch those series.)

The same evening at the SID offices the team is struggling with the case so much Da Qing suggests asking Hei Pao Shi’s help. Zhao Yunlan bristles at the idea, and… calls Shen Wei instead. Of course he does.

To be fair, he does so to check whether the other man is stalking him, but he also calls him by his given name rather Professor Shen, reinforcing that he makes this enquiry as a friend, not at as the chief of the Special Investigations Department.

During the phone call Shen Wei is absentmindedly playing with the corner of the publication he is reading.

While Yunlan does not deny that he still thinks Shen Wei is potentially up to something dodgy, he still proceeds to ask his advice on the case. This continues the dynamic from the previous episode: it’s not that Yunlan is completely blind, it’s just that he trusts Shen Wei regardless of the secrets he might be hiding.

Moving on, here’s what I have to say on he topic of bad CGI. There are several reasons in the world for a piece of visual media to have a poor quality computer animation. It could be laziness, or it could be absence of imagination, both of which are inexcusable. It also could be absence of funds, as is the case with the Guardian. And, honestly, I am alright with that. It’s not their fault, and I would much rather see this drama as it is - bad CGI and all - than none at all.

And, the quality of CGI here has energy similar to Live Action Sailor Moon (PGSM), which I honestly find both nostalgic and endearing.

That show also has a talking cat, but it’s performed by a literal plush toy on strings, so Guardian certainly wins here.

While Huang Linqi and Li Jiaqi are being kept together (possibly in an alternate dimension, seeing as how they have emerged from the lake completely dry), they talk through their relationship issues, and the audience finds itself with a sugar-sweet take on the arranged marriage/strangers to lovers trope. I feel a little bit bad about their disaster wedding now.

At the same time, Xiao Jun and Wu Tian’en’s story is a tiny echo of Shen Wei end Je Zun: the son thinks his dad left him to fend for himself when he was young and vulnerable, and distrusts the very concept of love because of that perceived abandonment. Unlike Je Zun however, he stops to have an actual conversation, which ultimately forces him to quit his senseless act of revenge, and make the first step on the path of reconciliation and redemption. This is Guardian telling us that communication skills do, in fact, matter.

He also drops this bombshell of a line, which hurts my heart a lot.

“In the face of death every love in the world is mere foam”

On an entirely separate note, I am very glad that the actor who plays Butler Wu is wearing nice thick knee pads.

They are very visible, and they make a little “boing” when he hits the ground, but the actor has to fall to his knees twice in this episode, both times on hard surfaces, one of which is literal gravel, and I’m happy that the production is being considerate of their actors’ physical well-being.

While this episode does not mark the first time Zhao Yunlan is being understanding to the Undergrounders in pain, this is the first time anti-Unvergrounder bigotry is explicitly framed in a negative light. The two evil businessmen, who cast a child aside just because he has special powers, are shown as unquestionably in the wrong. Xiao Jun is lightly scolded for his rash actions, but he is not brought back to SID in cuffs, and he is not immediately given away to Hei Pao Shi. Far from that: he is brought in softly, to spend some time at his dying father’s side.

As Butler Wu slipping away, we once more see Guo Changcheng being recklessly heroic, as he is prepared to use the Longevity Dial to share his life force. Instead of letting him do it, Zhao Yunlan snatches the Hallow away and decides to perform this particular miracle himself. This is the same man who will later sacrifice his eyesight to bring people’s lives back. Bai Yu’s acting in that moment is utterly phenomenal, showing a whole range of emotion from horror to determination to dismay in mere seconds.

Hei Pao Shi teleports in, and, without a preamble, scolds Zhao Yunlan (the first episode in the series-long “don’t touch the Hallows” saga), and then asks him whether it’s worth shortening his life for an Undergrounder. This is in equal parts a provocation and a test, because I’m fairly certain that Shen Wei was going to save Wu Tian’en anyway.

As SID members beg Hei Pao Shi to save Butler Wu in perfect unison, Zhao Yunlan states that a person is a person, regardless of their origin. Shen Wei notes inwardly that SID had changed, and, as expected, heals Butler Wu, while Yunlan stares at his power with relief and awe.

Since I have talked about the wide shot of the Dragon City, let’s talk about its counterpart in the Underworld.

I have failed to notice before that there appears to be a vast city next to the volcano river, some way away from the royal Palace, looming over it. Geographically, this makes little sense: we will see characters leave the Palace and instantly end up in a city square throughout the series, but I still really enjoy this wide shot. It is also interesting to see the architecture of the place. It is somewhere between (western) medieval abodes and futuristic shipment container blocks, with living spaces built on top of each other, crammed-in, and unpleasant. I also love the lighting here, contrasting blue and red.

Hallows random power #n: projecting their brethren. Imagine how useful it would be if they also did that for the Brush and the Lantern.

The next day, Zhao Yunlan and Da Qing are on a leisurely morning jog, while Yunlan is wearing bottoms that my partner refers to as “sheggings” (as in, shorts + leggings)

They are talking about Shen Wei, naturally. In my head-canon, Zhao Yunlan is driving his colleagues nuts because can’t help himself but bring the good professor up every goddamn minute of every goddamn day.

As they turn the corner to go home, they bump into the subject of discussion, who informs them that he moved into the building, and leaves abruptly looking more than slightly pleased with himself.

Finally, we are treated to Guo Changcheng’s surveillance exam. I don’t know why he thought this outfit would make him look less conspicuous.

Eventually, the SID will learn that some of their staff members don’t have to be fighters or detectives. In Xiao Guo, they have found the heart of their team, and that is enough.

Next up, Episode 6: The Coat Zhao Yunlan Will Buy

—

PS: I have mentioned earlier, that I have a sinking feeling as I watch Guardian, and I would like to elaborate on that. You see, I am very scared of flying. It’s an irrational fear, but it is the one I nonetheless have. There is a very specific feeling I get just as the plane starts gaining speed on the runway: there is joy, because at the end of this journey they is something to look forward to (my parents’ hugs, a drink with a friend, a favourite place, a new city to explore), but there is also a painful anticipation, as I brace for the moment the aircraft will tilt upwards, knowing that I will be pushed back into my chair by gravity, battling against an onslaught of a panic attack, shaking, learning to breathe, fighting with everything I have to keep my heart rate down. Watching Guardian from the beginning, knowing where the story is going, mirrors that feeling perfectly.

PPS: The following conversation happened with my partner as I way typing this recap.

My partner: Do you think Shen Wei ever wears sheggings?

Me: Sweetie, I think he would rather die.

#guardian #shen wei #zhao yunlan #weilan #rewatch #recap #please help I can't stop rambling

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suituuup · 3 years

Photo

pieces - chapter 4

summary: Five years ago, Chloe dropped off the face of the Earth. Beca didn't expect to see her again dancing in a strip club, out of all places.

rating: E (drug use, emotional abuse)

ao3 link

six years ago

Chloe glanced up at the Girls neon sign and adjusted her purse over her shoulder, sucking in a sharp breath. She wasn’t sure why she was so nervous; it was just dancing, right? Chloe loved dancing. Granted, it would be in a bikini and heels with mostly middle-aged men watching, a far cry from her performances as Bella, but she could do this.

She didn’t have much of a choice, anyway.

Money had been really tight lately, as it turned out living in NYC was really expensive, and her parents couldn’t help her much, given that they had already financed her seven years in Barden and her dad had health issues.

It was one of her colleagues at the coffee shop Chloe worked at who told her about stripping. The money was a lot better and the hours were flexible, so Chloe could go to class during the day, study for a bit at night then head to work. Sleep would be scarce but… it was either that or she wouldn’t be able to pay rent this month.

Sucking in a deep breath, Chloe pushed the door open and found it locked. It was only seven pm, but she didn’t want to bother the manager later in the night when it got busy. She knocked on the surface several times, the door eventually opening after a minute or two.

“Yes?” A slightly older woman popped her head out. “What can I do for you, honey? We don’t open ‘til nine.”

“I know, um, I was hoping to see the manager? I was told there was an opening for a stripper position.”

Her gaze swept over Chloe’s figure, and she smiled before opening the door wider. “Have a seat, I’ll call him.”

present time

“Marco, turn off your fucking phone,” Chloe groaned, patting the space next to her to wake him up.

The blaring alarm was jamming into her skull like a goddamn sledgehammer. When her hand only met soft sheets, Chloe’s eyes opened, instantly squinting against the blinding light. Marco wasn’t there. Not that it was much of a surprise, as he often slept around. “Fuck,” she muttered as she sat up, eventually locating the offending object and swiping across the screen until it turned silent. Chloe flopped back against the mattress, legs twisting into the sheets as she angled her face into the pillow. Her head was pulsing from a raging hangover and her mouth felt as dry as the freaking Sahara, but Chloe didn’t feel like moving.

She didn’t feel like living.

Each morning felt like having to claw herself a way out from underneath the rubble. Each morning felt like she had fallen a little bit deeper during the night.

All of that because of one wrong step, and a tumble.

five and a half years ago

Multiple Sclerosis.

Chloe remembered the day her parents told her about it. She was eighteen, it was a warm evening in the summer. She had been stargazing, like she often did during those peaceful nights, making the most of Oregon’s gorgeous skies before she moved to Atlanta for college.

Her mom called her inside, sitting her down at the table. Chloe could immediately tell something was wrong.

Her dad was sick. Multiple Sclerosis, the doctor said. Chloe had heard of it, but she wasn’t sure what it meant. Her dad explained it was something to do with the brain and the nerves. He was starting to lose feeling in his right arm, and it would only get worse with age.

The news crushed Chloe; her dad was her best friend, her adventure buddy. He took her on camping trips before she could walk. They went fishing together, played ball on the nearby court, or went for runs on the beach on Sundays. He often talked about how excited he was to do all these things with his grandchildren in the future.

Since his disease was late-onset, it progressed quickly. Her dad could no longer walk, and she could tell her parents were struggling with affording treatment, homecare, and equipment to make their lives easier.

“More shifts, huh?” Greg, the club’s manager, asked her as he reclined back in his leather chair behind his desk, folding his hands over his stomach.

“Yeah, I’m a little tight on money and would like to work two more nights a week.”

She would figure out how to juggle stripping with school. She just would.

“I don’t have any more shifts available, unfortunately. However…” he pushed to his feet and rounded his desk, leaning against it as he faced Chloe. “Clients like you. I’ve stopped counting the number of times they requested you for something private. So there’s always that option to make extra cash.”

“Something private?” Chloe cleared her throat. “What um-- what does that entail exactly?”

Greg smirked. “Anything goes for the right amount of money.”

Chloe knew the more she thought about it, the most likely she was to chicken out. So she agreed.

“You look like you’re going to be sick, hun,” Martha, the oldest stripper of the bunch, said as she approached Chloe. She sat in front of her vanity, mentally preparing herself to go into one of the VIP rooms with a client. “You need to pull yourself together, babe. The client won’t enjoy it if you’re nervous.”

She reached inside her purse and produced a tiny zip-lock bag with a bit of white powder in it.

“Helps to take the edge off, especially on your first time,” she added when Chloe glanced at her in shock.

“I don’t-- I don’t do that stuff.”

She knew drugs got around the club. Most of the girls used. Crack, ecstasy, heroin, meth… you name it, Chloe had seen it go around. But she promised herself she’d never go down that route.

Martha shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

Chloe lasted three weeks before snorting her first line.

present time

“Fuck, where is it?” Chloe muttered to herself as she rummaged through her bag, eventually tipping it back so its contents spread over the mattress.

She spotted the tiny bag and snatched it, smearing some of its content onto the small mirror laying on her bedside table. Her hand shook as she used an expired credit card to make a line, then grabbed the straw.

You know that first cup of coffee of the day you can hardly function without? Well, that is what cocaine had become to Chloe. She used to justify her actions by convincing herself she could stop anytime she wanted to. But it was already too late. She was hooked, and it was too fucking hard to stop.

As she plopped back on her bed and attempted to relax while the coke worked on her nervous system, Chloe thought of Beca.

five years ago

Bree 💕

Chloe groaned at the name flashing on her vibrating phone and flipped it over, curling up in a ball on her bed. She had been ignoring most of the girls for the past few weeks. Every glance at the group chat reminded her of how much of a failure she was.

Aubrey had just passed the bar. Beca had been nominated for a Grammy. Cynthia-Rose was a music producer. Stacie, a space engineer. And so on.

They were all successful in life, while Chloe?

Well, Chloe had dropped out of vet school. She was a stripper who pleasured men for a living. She lived in a tiny box apartment and spent her grocery money on crack. She got drunk pretty much every night and had absolutely no prospect in life.

Their yearly Bellas reunion was just around the corner, and Chloe hadn’t replied yet, which was no doubt the reason behind her best friend calling this morning. And yesterday. And the day before that.

Chloe couldn’t go. For the same reason, she couldn’t go home to her parents.

The thought of it only fed that shame eating away at her soul.

present day

Chloe hadn’t allowed herself to think about the Bellas in a long time, as it only brought heartbreak, regrets, and even more shame over how she had left things.

But then Beca showed up out of the blue, and Chloe’s shield instantly materialized. She saw it right there in Beca’s eyes; the pity over what Chloe had become. That unspoken reminder that she was a failure made Chloe want to crawl out of her own skin.

Chloe wasn’t planning on using that business card. Even though Beca was on her mind near constantly, she couldn’t bring herself to call her. And then they bumped into one another last week, and despite the snark, what was left of the Chloe from six years ago within her thought it might mean something.

A coffee. Coffee was fine, to start with.

Sarah was unexpected, yet another proof of how together Beca’s life was. But Chloe pushed through the discomfort swirling around her insides, up until the money comment. Up until it further dawned on her that they now belonged to two very different worlds.

Beca was probably a multi-millionaire. Aubrey was a lawyer. And Chloe? Well, Chloe was still just as worthless as she was five years ago. That shame she had somehow managed to bury all that time came right back around to slap her in the face.

So she bolted, figuring this was the last she would see of Beca Mitchell.

Except Chloe couldn’t stop thinking about her.

Grabbing her computer, she sat up against the headboard and balanced the device on her thighs, allowing herself to look Beca up for the first time in five years.

Various photos of Beca on the red carpet and a Wikipedia page popped up, and Chloe clicked on the page, swallowing the lump forming in her throat as she scrolled down. Fifteen minutes later, she somehow found herself on YouTube, typing in the same name and clicking on the most popular video.

Something unraveled within her as she heard that voice for the first time in half a decade. An array of emotions released, but one stood out over the others as it was a feeling Chloe hadn’t experienced in a long time: peace.

Music hadn’t felt like music for a long while; Chloe had lost her connection to it somewhere down the road. She had grown numb to it, just like with most things that used to make her happy.

But this… Chloe had forgotten what it felt like to be moved by lyrics. To feel comforted by a melody that felt like a warm blanket over her soul. Soon tears were slipping out of her eyes and Chloe didn’t do anything to stop them. She curled up in a ball and played Beca’s albums on shuffle for the next three hours, basking in that temporary moment of serenity.

When it eventually stopped, Chloe plucked Beca’s business card from her bedside table and grabbed her phone, blinking several times to clear her vision so she could punch in the right numbers. Her heart echoed in her ears as she waited for someone to pick it up.

“BMLJ, Tara speaking, how may I help?”

“H-hi, this is Chloe Beale. I was wondering if I could speak to Beca? Beca Mitchell.”

“Hold please.”

Chloe started picking on her nails, battling with the little voice inside her head encouraging her to hang up.

“Chlo?”

Chloe’s chest tightened at the nickname, and her voice stuck to her throat. “Hi.”

“What’s wrong? Are you crying?”

“No, I… I mean yes, I am crying but I-- I just listened to your music and-- it’s amazing, Beca.”

“Oh.” Beca sounded surprised. A few beats of silence follow. “It means a lot that you liked it, Chlo.”

It took Chloe a handful of seconds to realize she was the one supposed to say something. “I um, is this a bad time?”

“No, no. What’s up?”

Chloe sucked in a sharp breath as she picked at a loose thread on her sleeping shorts. “I um, well I was wondering if we could see each other sometime next week? I’m sorry about the other day, I wasn’t-- I wasn’t feeling great.”

“You don’t need to apologize. And yeah, that sounds great. How about Thursday for lunch? Or a walk in the park, if you prefer.”

“A walk in the park sounds good.”

“We can meet next to the Roosevelt statue in front of the Natural History Museum at 12:30?”

“Okay.”

“Chloe?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m really happy you called. See you on Thursday.”

Chloe’s smile felt like the first genuine one in too long. “See you on Thursday.”

“What’s going on on Thursday?”

Chloe jolted, looking over her shoulder to find Marco standing in the doorway. “Jesus, Marco. You scared the crap out of me.”

two years ago

“I’m Marco, the club’s new manager,” the dark-haired man introduced himself, extending a hand towards Chloe.

Chloe shook his hand. “I’m Ariel.”

“You really are as beautiful as they say.”

She glanced through the mirror and met his eyes; unimpressed. “Is it a habit of yours to hit on your employees?”

He chuckled. “No. I guess you’re the exception.”

Chloe wasn’t interested. At first, anyway. But Marco had apparently set his sights on her, and well, Chloe felt lonely. They played around each other for a few months, eventually giving in to their attraction towards each other. One night’s shenanigans blossomed into more, and Chloe found herself falling for her boss.

And she believed him when he told her he loved her. He was the buoy in her storm, the hand that was pulling her from underneath the rubble. Chloe was so blinded by that that she didn’t pick up on his toxic behavior right away.

“Here’s a thought,” he murmured one morning as they lay in bed in his luxurious condo.

Chloe raised an eyebrow. She was definitely still drunk from last night, her recent hit of crack causing her mind to float blissfully.

He set his chin on her hipbone as he lay on his stomach, looking up at her. “I don’t want you to work in the VIP room anymore.”

“Are you jealous or something?” Chloe slurred, smirking to mask how desperate she was to stop working in the VIP room. It had crushed her spirit. “You know I can’t afford to only live on lapdances and the stage. I have rent and bills to pay.”

He licked his lips, a soft smile spreading across her features. “I know. Which is why you should move in with me.”

Chloe rolled her eyes. “We’ve been together only four months.”

“But I love you,” he said, almost desperately. “And you love me too, right? We’re good together, baby.”

A sigh flitted past Chloe’s lips. “Even if I do move in, I still have to take care of my dad.”

“I know that too. And I want you to get a cut from the nightly profit, too.”

Chloe should have known it was too good to be true, yet she agreed.

It was another year before the veil lifted and Marco showed his true character.

present

Marco ignored her. As he usually did. “What’s going on on Thursday?” He repeated his tone calm and collected as always.

“I’m meeting up with Beca.” Not waiting for an answer, Chloe stood and padded out of the bedroom and towards the kitchen. It was nearly five, and she hadn’t eaten anything yet.

“The chick from the 20 grand lapdance?” Marco followed, crossing his arms as he leaned against the counter while Chloe rummaged through the cupboards for a snack. “What’s her deal?”

“What do you mean, what’s her deal? We’re just gonna catch up. I told you, we used to be friends in college.”

Marco’s features hardened. “I don’t want you to see her.”

Chloe grabbed a box of crackers and rolled her eyes. “I don’t remember asking you for your opinion.”

Marco approached, pinning her between his body and the counter. “Don’t talk to me like that, Chloe.”

Chloe gritted her teeth and glared at him, standing her ground. “I never complain about you sleeping around with other women and you lose your mind over me meeting a friend? You don’t control me. I’ll meet her if I want to.”

She moved to get past him, yelping when he yanked her back by the arm. The anger swirling in his eyes made her choke on her saliva.

“I don’t think you realize how much I’ve done for you, Chloe. If it weren’t for me, you’d still be giving blowjobs for a living.” He didn’t need to raise his voice; the truth behind his words was powerful enough as they wormed their way into Chloe’s brain. “Does she even know you’re a crack addict? That you can’t go more than five hours without a hit?” He continued, seemingly finding it satisfying to break through Chloe’s armor. “Maybe she’s just looking for a charity case.”

Chloe warred with her mind not to believe him, shaking her head as her insecurities muffled her anger towards Marco. “That’s not-- that’s not true. You’re wrong.”

“Am I?”

Chloe remained silent, doubt seizing her.

“That’s what I thought.” Marco’s hold loosened. “Think about your dad, sweetheart. It would be a shame if you suddenly found yourself without a job and no money to provide for him. You know no other strip club will want you if I fire you. And that’s all you can do, isn’t it? Using your body to charm men into giving you money.” He squeezed her hip, leaning in closer so he was whispering the next bit directly against her ear. “So I would listen if I were you.”

He walked away then, but his words remained, trapping Chloe’s mind in an invisible prison.

#bechloe #bechloe fanfic #chloe beale #beca mitchell #pitch perfect fanfic #pieces

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candycityy · 3 years

Text

waltz

Synopsis: He'd chase her to hell itself, and beyond, if he had to. Greek mythology/PJO-inspired reincarnation AU.

[Click here to read on AO3 instead.]

The first time, Levi dies quietly, in his sleep.

He does not go out in fire and fury; it is a peaceful death, one he goes into with grey in his temples and sickness in his blood, unbecoming of humanity's strongest soldier. But Levi has never been a hero. Never wanted to.

He wakes to the gentle, rocking motion of a sailboat. It's dark, cavernous, but there is no ceiling as far as he can see, only steep walls of grey rock that stretch into the sky, lined with candle sconces that curve upwards and throw eerie blue light onto the dew-slicked surfaces.

He moves to sit up. His head spins, his consciousness threadbare and fragmented. When he glances over the edge of the boat, he sees a strange reflection in the black water.

It's him, but...different. Paler, younger, gaunter. The ghostly light casts shadows that pool in the hollows of his cheekbones and underneath his eyes, making him look almost skeletal.

Appropriate, he supposes, considering he's dead.

The figure that sits silently at the other end of the boat smiles, a flash of white, pointed teeth in a silhouetted face. "Levi Ackerman," it pronounces. Its voice is soft but grating, like its vocal cords are made of rusted iron instead of soft flesh. "I finally meet you. It's an honour."

"More than I can say for you." His voice is unnaturally loud, bouncing off the rock and echoing into the silence. "Am I supposed to know who the fuck you are?"

"I am Charon." It inclines its head, and Levi catches a flash of its eyes; they're the same strange blue-grey as the flames that light the cave. "You don't know me, but I know you. Oh, if I could count all the times I've heard that name on the lips of the newly-dead...as if you were a demon, or a god."

When Levi doesn't respond, Charon continues, its conversational tone clashing with the rasp of its voice. "But now that I see you here, as dead as any of your soldiers, I see you are no more than simply human."

The boat bumps roughly against the shore. In the distance, a city emerges, like magic, from the darkness. It glows with a warm light, delicate towers of glass rising up into the sky, which is already lightening into a soft, clear blue. As Levi watches, the grey rock of the shore metamorphoses into an endless, rolling green field, blades of grass shifting and swaying in a nonexistent breeze.

"Your fare?" Charon extends a bloodless, expectant hand. Levi stares back uncertainly.

"What?"

"There is always a price to pay, to cross over into death." Charon's withered lips curve into a smirk. "Blood, or wealth, or sorrow...and in your case, that." It nods at his clenched fist.

He uncurls his fingers, revealing a tattered soldier's patch, torn from their uniform, embroidered with the emblem of blue and white wings he thought he'd never see again. It sits among a sea of red, crescent-shaped imprints, carved into pale flesh.

Before Levi can react, the ferryman reaches over and plucks it from his open palm. In its skeletal grasp, the patch shrinks and changes, turning into a single heavy, gold coin.

Charon stands up, its spine curving into a low, mocking bow.

"Welcome to Elysium, Levi Ackerman. I wish you a pleasant death."

Levi doesn't remember much about his death.

He'd died in bed, he thinks—he remembers the sharp, acrid scent of medicine and disinfectant, the way the illness crept into his bloodstream, making his bones brittle and his lungs constrict. But already, his time on earth is becoming a distant memory, colours and textures and emotions once cast in sharp detail softening into a sighing, distant grey.

Such is the spell of Elysium, he hazily guesses. The pain of life has no place in paradise, and his life has been so little apart from pain. Some memories remain, though, either unable or unwilling to be pried from his mind—a strange, lilting lullaby in a language he doesn't recognise. The crisp aroma of fresh tea leaves. Hair the colour of a sunset, a shifting mass of reds and golds. A name.

He struggles to remember, and fails.

The ground is soft, unresisting, under the crunch of his boots, and Levi isn't sure if it's been minutes or years when he finally steps onto dry sand. When he looks up, he's engulfed by the radiance of the golden city—Elysium.

"Welcome, hero." The woman that appears before him smiles. She is undeniably beautiful, and yet not quite right; there is something unnatural, inhuman, to the curve of her mouth and the brightness in her cerulean gaze. Her white dress drapes her every curve and flows to the ground, gossamer-like and almost liquid. A closer look reveals that it is constructed entirely of tiny white flower petals, stitched together with a silky, translucent thread—spiderwebs, he realises with an inward shudder.

"I am Persephone, queen of the Underworld, goddess of spring." She lifts a hand, and a sighing, heady breeze envelopes her, making her hair and dress ripple. "Levi Ackerman—I must admit, I expected you much sooner."

"Sorry to disappoint," he says flatly. "Although, you can't really blame me for trying my damned best to avoid, you know. Dying."

"Well, no matter." She lifts an elegant shoulder, in a guise of a shrug. "You're here now. I'm delighted to welcome you into my realm."

She spreads her arms in a dramatic gesture, and the otherworldly light coming off her intensifies to an almost blinding degree. He winces wordlessly. "Could you turn that goddess thing off?"

"Hmm." Persephone casts him a thoughtful look, and then smiles, catlike. "Maybe you'd prefer this, instead, then?"

As he watches, her statuesque form shrinks until the top of her head reaches just below his eye-level. Her elaborate crown of braids, as pale gold as a wheatfield, softens and falls to her collarbone, and darkens into a honeyed copper. Her features blur and bubble over, revealing amber eyes and a too-familiar smile.

The elusive name—he forgot, how could he forget?—is torn from his throat, a ragged whisper. "Petra."

The word is a hook, tugging to the surface a lifetime of memories, and all at once, he remembers.

The first time he'd seen her, she'd been participating in a titan drill. She'd swept through the air like quicksilver, tumbling past her comrades in a graceful choreography of movement, silvered blades like deadly extensions of her slender arms. But far more arresting was the look in her eyes: her amber irises set ablaze from within, bright with ferocity and triumph.

She'd been the first person in the Survey Corps who'd ever been kind to him; who'd looked him straight in the eye and spoke honestly, defiantly. Levi doesn't know exactly when, but she'd cut a hole into his chest with that warm, reticent smile. And for the first time since he was nine years old, he'd allowed himself to be weak.

An initially uneasy truce had grown into a comfortable companionship, and after months of push-and-pull, polite banter turned into shared moments in the corridors, and evening tea sessions turned into late nights spent in his office, fingers intertwined underneath the table.

And he remembers, with startling clarity, the day he'd been walking in a Sina marketplace and found that silver ring, set with a stone the exact colour of her eyes. He remembers how it'd seemed to burn a hole in his pocket after he bought it, day after day, week after week. Impatient. Demanding.

It'd burned all the more when he'd found her that day, sprawled against the tree, her neck thrown back at a grotesque angle, empty eyes trained at the sky.

"So you do prefer this." The goddess who is not Petra smiles, cold and otherworldly, and the expression looks desperately wrong on her face. "How terribly unsurprising. Humans are all the same, in every age and time...I suppose even being humanity's strongest wouldn't change a thing."

"Is she here?" is all he manages to say. Persephone waves a slender white hand, carelessly.

"Perhaps, perhaps not," she drawls. "But we are not here to talk about your long-lost love, Levi Ackerman. We are here to talk about you, and that all the wildest desires that your fragile little soul can muster." Her lip curls. "You are in Elysium. What is your heart's desire, hero? What do you ask of paradise?"

"Isn't that your job, to figure that out?" he shoots back. She sighs.

"Well, yes, I suppose. I'd hoped you would be different, but you seem just as human as the rest." She pronounces the word in a manner similar to the ferryman, with a kind of amused scorn. "For most humans, it's either love and power—only two things satiate them."

Her ageless green eyes seem to pierce him like knives. "Which do you want, Levi Ackerman? What drives you?"

Kenny once said, everybody needs to be a slave to something. A god, a drug, something to be drunk on, to keep the air circulating through their lungs and to force them to wake up day after hellish day.

Levi doesn't agree. He'd lived years and years without anything, after all; a shell of a man driven by pure survival instinct, by the sheer virtue of a heart that refused to stop beating, all the way until it did.

But Petra had been different. She'd believed in the old stories, the ones in the countryside hymns she used to sing. Of a purpose, a meaning, something greater. Sometimes she'd close her eyes, her lips moving in a soundless prayer, and he'd close his eyes as well and wish with all his heart to believe, too.

He looks straight at the goddess. "Nothing," he replies, truthfully.

Persephone laughs, a too-perfect, bell-like sound, that is so utterly unlike Petra's that it sounds nearly obscene coming from her lips. "Oh, you are just delightful, hero. You're telling the truth, aren't you? That's adorable. And yet—this girl," she gestures down at herself, "I saw her at the top of your mind. Your biggest regret, isn't she, Levi Ackerman?"

He grits his teeth. "So what if she is?"

"She is not here, hero." Persephone smiles, her pale irises alight with an icy glee, and for a second, a wave of cold dread crashes over him—could she have ended up anywhere else? No, she was a soldier, brave to the end. She couldn't have.

"Not anymore. You're too late." An exhale of relief—she had made it here, after all. "Petra has chosen a different path, to be reborn again, and to try for the Isles of the Blessed."

"The what now?"

"It is a paradise above all," she explains airily. "To reach it, you must live and die thrice, and each time reach such heights of heroism or courage that so suffice to earn you entry into Elysium."

Levi exhales, a low hiss escaping his teeth. Of course she would have—she was always so restless, so fierce, a caged bird striving constantly for the sky. She could never stay in one place, never settle down into comfort and domesticity. Elysium would never have been enough for the girl with fire in her eyes and an unquenchable thirst for more.

"What will you do?" She surveys him with her cool, immortal gaze. It rankles him.

"I'm going, too." He straightens, fixes her with a a cold glare. Persephone cants her head to the side, her expression shifting to something akin to amusement.

"Then, will you give up Elysium to follow this girl?" She waves a hand, and the city's glow reaches almost blinding heights, forcing him to turn his gaze away.

"How much does she mean to you, hero? In this city wait so many who you know and love, who have yearned to see you. Your men, who gave up their lives for you. Your friends, who rode with you to their deaths. Your mother, your own flesh and blood.

"Petra Ral has the spirit of a warrior," she adds, almost conversationally. "Do you, Levi Ackerman? You, with your heart that has ever only wanted peace and comfort?” Her lips twist, mocking. “Or is your heroism a mere product of your circumstances? Do not expect to be blessed with Ackerman blood again, this time. And if you fail—you will never see any of your loved ones again."

Some paradise.

"Do I have to make this decision now? Don't suppose I could stop to sightsee first?" His words are gelid but his tone is raw—not that he'd fool the goddess either way, he supposes.

"Of course not. That wouldn't be any fun," she goes, with that chilling bell-like laugh that makes his hair stand on end. He hesitates.

He thinks of Isabel, that trusting, childlike gleam in her eyes. Furlan, arms folded, leaning against the doorframe with that knowing smirk ghosting over his lips. His mother, singing him lullabies in the dark of the brothel. Erwin, who he'd told, in no uncertain terms, to give up his dreams and die.

And Levi knows it isn't there—he'd slid it onto the finger of her corpse, all those years ago, and it'd be little more than tarnished metal against bleached white bone by now—but he feels the phantom heat of the ring in his pocket, scorching hot. No regrets.

He's never had a single regret, except for her.

Levi lifts his head, and meets the goddess's gaze, unfaltering. Decisive. "I'm going."

"If you wish. But know this, hero." Her voice seems to thunder through the city. "If you succeed, upon your third death you may enter the Isles and live a life of eternal bliss.

"But, if you fail to reach Elysium even a single time." Persephone's eyes gleam with a predatory eagerness, "you are doomed to spend eternity in whatever realm you are sentenced to. The light of paradise will be barred to you...forever."

Talk about dramatic.

"Get on with it, then," he almost spits. It figures, it really does, that even in death, he wouldn't get a second of fucking peace.

Persephone casts him a quelling look. He ignores it. With a roll of her eyes, she waves a hand, and immediately, the glow of the city begins to crumble away, even the sand beneath his feet, and he feels himself fall. An incredible wind rises, and he finds himself being shoved backwards, the fields and the cavern roaring in his ears.

"As a final gift to you, hero..." The goddess's teeth flash tauntingly in the fading light, like pearls set against ebony. "I grant you memory."

The last thing he sees is the glint of cruel delight in her eyes.

#rivetra #levi ackerman x petra ral #i was reading madeline miller's circe and it reminded me of this fic which never materialised #much to my FRUSTRATION #candycity writes #levi ackerman #petra ral

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oosteven-universe · 3 years

Text

Last Flight Out #1

Last Flight Out #1 Dark Horse Comics 2021 Created & Written by Marc Guggenheim Created & Illustrated by Eduardo Ferigato Coloured by Marcelo Costa Lettered by Diego Sanches The only way to survive is to abandon Earth! With Earth rendered uninhabitable, humanity has chosen to evacuate to the stars. But with just twenty-four hours left until the last ark, designed to evacuate Earth's residents, leaves forever, its designer's estranged daughter goes missing. I liked this a heck of a lot more than I thought I would and that’s huge because I already had high expectations for this because Marc is writing the story. As the story is being told you find yourself being drawn into the story and you begin to see that Dr. Caewood, must use the Doctor denotation, is a very driven individual. The kind that once he starts working on a problem or project that’s solely where his focus is. We know people like that in the real world who aren’t snobbish or conceited but have that tunnel vision and have that uncontrollable need to be working on what is in front of them. I see this in Ben and in the first few pages you get that sense of who he is and I think that’s pretty amazing. I am loving the way that this is being told. The story & plot development that we see through how the sequence of events unfold as well as how the reader learns information is presented exceptionally well. The character development that we see through the dialogue, the character interactions as well as how they act and react to the situations and circumstances which they encounter does a magnificent job in bringing the characters to life. I’m really am super impressed with how well we get to know and understand Ben and how what we see is just a tiny scratch on the surface of who he is. The pacing is excellent and as it takes us through the pages introducing the characters, the story and the world they live in you can feel it has this almost cinematic quality to it. How we see this being structured and how the layers within the story emerge, grow and strengthen we see this amazing talent from Marc in how he’s able to craft this story. The layers open up these avenues, some of which are or will be explored others just for the moment and regardless they add this great depth, dimension and complexity to the story. How we see everything working together to create the story’s ebb & flow as well as how it moves the story forward is impeccably achieved. I am a huge fan of the interior artwork here. The linework is extraordinary and how the varying weights and techniques are being utilised to create this level & quality to the detail work we see throughout the issue is bloody brilliant. The faces and facial expressions really do this magnificent job in furthering the characterisation. That we see such a prolific use of backgrounds makes me such a happy camper as they really do expand and enhance each and every moment. They also work within the composition of the panels to bring out the depth perception, sense of scale and the overall sense of size and scope to the story. The utilisation of the page layouts and how we see the angles and perspective in the panels show a masterful eye for storytelling. The various hues and tones within the colours being utilised to create the shading, highlights and shadow work really shows a beautiful understanding of how colour works. Seeing the sun rise on Tevat Noah III is the shot of all shots and perfectly demonstrates how I feel about the work being done here. The story is almost familiar enough to the reader though honestly without knowing cause only the effect is something is definitely unique. There’s a raw, fresh and honest feeling about what we are seeing here that shows why I personally will read everything Marc does. You get the feelings off the characters, particularly Ben and Adhira, that makes you feel like these are friends of yours and you can see, feel and experience their pain which is utterly amazing to me. With some of today’s strongest most intelligent writing along with some damn fine characterisation and some absolutely bloody stunning interiors this is one story you do not want to sleep on.

#Comic Books #Comics Reviews #Dark Horse Comics

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xxtraord1nary · 3 years

Text

POV

Fandom: Open Heart

Pairing: Tobias Carrick x f!mc (Charlotte West)

Word Count: 1.6k

A/N: Constructive criticism is always welcome! No hate please and thank you for reading reblog and comment if you enjoyed.

Summary: A very naughty and heavily pregnant Charlotte much prefers her handsome lovers point of view.

Warnings: Strong Language, Fellatio, Sex, and a tad of dark humor. If that makes you uncomfortable please exit stage left because you’ve been warned. Overall vulgar.

Tag list: @katkart122 @missmiimiie @openheartfanfics

“Tobias, I am not playing with you get that damn camera out of my face! It's way too early for your shit.” Charlotte snapped whilst swatting at the pest she called a husband as he continued to record his very moody wife with his old camera he found a couple a months ago when Char ordered him with a broom in hand to go “clean that damn garage” or he could sleep on the couch for a month, so that being all the motivation he needed Tobias got to it with vigor.

“You're really good at this whole black mama thing Charlie.” he teases with a shit eating grin plastered on his stupidly perfect face. “Keep it up and I’ll be a single black mama if you don’t quit.” she grunted while taking down her plaited kinky tendrils that in the morning tended to have a mind of their own.

“Now why would you say that?”

“Because I’m going to kill you” she said whilst continuing to grumpily apply toothpaste to her electric toothbrush.

“Really talking like that when I’m recording, then the police will immediately know who to be held responsible in the case of my untimely demise, Charlie.” he further ribbed while shaking his head playfully behind the lens.

“Screw you and the police Carrick.” she spat.

“Babe, you know all you have to do is corporate and let me get my daily picture of you and our little Tiny Tia. So get with the program.” he chided with a small but genuine smile as he further gazed at the love of his life and their little one growing inside her very pregnant belly.

“Alright two things: that name is super cute and I’m surprised you came up with that yourself.”

“I’m good for something, see?” to which she answered with a ‘meh’ and shrug of her shoulders.

“I’m offended.” and again another answer in the form of shrugged shoulders and a hard roll of the eyes.

“Now for two, why on earth do you need a picture every day?” she whined with tired eyes.

“This is our first child out of many, I need to capture every moment. Now lift up your shirt!” he confidently proclaimed.

She didn’t want to burst his little bubble but if he thought for a second she was pushing another of his big headed babies out of her lady parts he was sorely mistaken. ‘What the hell is “out of many” anyways?’ she pondered with a perplexed expression. “Absolutely not, I look like a gross ragamuffin.”

He sighed, “Charlie lift up your shirt or I’m gonna hold out.” he asservated pleased with her shocked expression. “Oh yeah, hold out what exactly?” she challenged with raised eyebrows. He knew the denial of sex would be the thing to do it for her. Already she had an insatiable sexual appetite hence here they were here six months pregnant, but pregnancy hormones only amplified that. “You really don’t wanna play those games with me Tobias, or you’ll find yourself handcuffed to bed and taken by force.” she lightheartedly fired back. “I’m quite intrigued as long as I can return the favor.” he huskily dropped an octave and whispered to her. She shivered and scoffed “You a silly little freak.” with a laugh.

“Honestly Charlie, all this is unnecessary as all I wanted was my pictures and could have been going about my business by now but someone refused to get along with the picture. Pun heavily intended.” he sighed.

“Okay I’ll bite, but what are you even doing with these pictures?”

“Well, if you must know. I take your picture or video then I pleasure myself.” he sexily drawled “then upload it online to make a virtual scrapbook.” he happily finished. “Why am I not surprised?” she chuckled as she shoved his laughing form. “Wait, you still masturabte?” she inquisitively questioned.

“Well, yeah sometimes you're in a horrifying mood and I’d rather work with what I’ve got than you ripping my head off, do you?”

“Actually no, not since I met you at least.” she truthfully noted, as her hands just didn’t do the job since Dr. Tobias Carrick waltzed into her life with his devilishly handsome face and rocked her world.

“I’m doing my job right then.” he pressed with a smirk. “Mhm, too right if you ask me.” she quipped pointing to her very round and beautiful stomach adorned with barely visible glittery stretch marks that only magnified her beauty and strength. “What’s on your mind now?” he pried while she poked at her bump in the mirror. “Me and Sienna, Aurora, and Jackie are going out to Carson Beach and I can’t decide whether to wear a two or one piece.”

“Two pieces of course so I can enjoy the fruits of my labor.” he smiled proudly.

“Four minutes hardly constitutes at “labor” she mocked with air quotes. He smacked his teeth in annoyance, “If you loved me you’d do this for me.” he pleaded. And now it was her turn to kiss her teeth, “Fine!” she huffed. “But leave my face out of it, I look icky in the mornings.” to which he eagerly disagreed and pecked her lips but not before muttering something along the lines of “stunning”.

“Alright, I’ll give you your little video but you have to do something for me.” she suggestively proposed. To which he readily agreed as he loved her ‘just been fucked’ afterglow. He then turned off the old camcorder and attempted to put it away but she fingered the loops of his jeans “Uh uh turn it back on.”

He was sure his eyes were completely bulging out of his skull and managed to mutter a “Charlie a-are you serious?” in his daze. She nodded and sunk down to her knees as she slowly tugged down his boxers and elicited a low groan from him.

In the lens of the camera she expertly handled his member with care and tenderly began to stroke him giggling at his floored expression. “You ready for me, Tobias?” she tantalizingly asked not ceasing her stroking. Receiving an eager nod and thumbs up from the camera she smirked at her success in making the talkative bastard speechless. Expertly she teased his large in girth and lengthy member with the tip of her tongue before guiding him into her mouth as she had done tons of times before sucking her mans dick like a woman starved.

“Oh god, slow down baby.” Tobias pitifully groaned while screwing his mind down as the love of his life expertly worked him. “You wanna be inside me, baby?” she whispered in a sultry tone against the head of his member cursing a pleasant shiver to rack his body. He didn’t answer but instead made a gesture behind the camera for me to turn around. He thanked the heavens above for the easy access and the fact that she was wearing one of his shirts and abandoned underwear long ago. She hissed as his large strong hand cam crashing down on her bare ass, and soothed the pleasant sting with a soft rub. “Perfect.” he murmured as he continued his caressing of her more than generous backside. “How’s the view?” she asked with a wink through the mirror.

And with a quick and brutal thrust he was inside leaving her panting mess on the cold surface of the bathroom countertop as she moaned slowly.

“Amazing.” he quickly answered before he began his unrelenting deep thrust. “Deeper” she moaned out in the air. Resting on her palms and easing away from the countertop she made eye contact with a chipper Tobias as he violently thrust into her and she had to brace herself. “Where are you going Char?” Tobias teased as she stood on her tiptoes desperately in an unsuccessful attempt of creating space between them.

“Damn I know I told him deeper, but now he's just showing out for the camera.” she thought while groaning as he hit a spot inside her making let out a loud guttural moan. He made the most out of his opportunity reaching to rub her clit. Moaning even louder he soon used one hand to grip her shoulder as he angled the camcorder downwards to catch sight of his pelvis meeting her dripping cunt. Closing her eyes for some reprieve she opened them to meet Tobias’s eyes in the mirror to find him damn near gnawing through his lip to hold back his loud groans.

Her release soon crep up on her and she moaned loudly, “Baby, I-” to which he cut her off as he sped up his tireless thrust, “Me too. Don’t wait for me.” and with that she came harder than ever and fell back on the counter, a panting mess and sweating bullets and winced as he pulled out of her. She mistakenly thought he was going to clean her only for him to zoom in the camera to get a close up of her used pussy with his milky cum dripping out of her.

Once he caught his breath he chuckled “That was amazing and it wasn’t even my birthday.” to which she rolled her eyes with a dazed expression and a small smile on her face since enjoying the after effects of their morning activities.

“Yeah yeah you better delete that.” she warned turning on the shower.

“Uh-Uh Charlie we just made a porno, I’m downloading this to my USB and keeping it in my safe.” he remarked while being transfixed at the camcorder in his hands causing her to snort with laughter.

“Whatever, if it gets leaked I better get paid for it.” she declared while leaving to her shower leaving Tobias in a cheerful fit of post orgasmic laughter.

Fin.

A/N: That was nasty and you read it so you’re nasty too.

#tobias carrick #open heart #tobias carrick x oc #PB #choices #one shot #tobias carrick fic #tobias #carrick #poc #black woman #black lead #bwbm #spotify #f!mc

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lune-hime · 3 years

Text

Garden of Tulips (Levi/Reader) Tea Time #3

~Click me for more chapters~

“What did it look like?”

“Hmm?” Levi looked up from his place next to your sleeping form. “The titan that tried to snack on my darling granddaughter.” “Ugly as fuck.” “Aren’t they all?”

Levi recounts memories of the reader and their shared life together while she recovers from a serious injury.

!!WARNINGS!! - Violence, gore, smut, wholesome content ;)

So these little Tea Times were written as little filler-memory chapters to place in between the main story line.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Fever

↞♞♘↠

Today was not one of your best days, physically or mentally. It had downpoured that morning, leaving the training grounds coated in slippery rivers of mud. Despite the less than ideal conditions, Pixis had insisted that the cadets still complete their daily training tasks. Equally as unideal was the remnants of a fever that still clung to your fatigued form. You were not exempt from training, however, as the onsite nurse had given you the okay for physical activity despite your joints still aching and sporadic chills. You sloshed through the mud, trying to distract yourself from the rapid pounding of your head against your skill as you jogged.

And just as you started feeling optimistic about your exercise, your foot caught in a deep trench of slush and twisted your ankle so awkwardly it sent you flying into the mud. Your face stung from the impact and the gritty taste of dirt coated your lips. The footsteps of other cadets against the wet ground sounded like thunder against your ears as they spared but a passing glance to your fallen form. You coughed and sat up, attempting to regain what sickly dignity you had left when a sharp pain in your ankle sent freezing jolts throughout your body.

“Cadet, get your ass up and finish the run. A little rain shouldn’t stop you.” A barbed voice cut through the dreary haze. You knew that voice only from afar; overheard from distant chatter or through the horrifying tales told by your fellow cadets. And now the famed captain was standing above you, vibrant pupils of ice regarding you through curtains of shadow.

“I can’t sir.” You whimpered. Damn, you hated sounding so weak. But the throbbing of your head was like the bashing of an army of percussionists about to herniate out of your skull and while your ankle was not sprained, you reckoned it would be if you kept pushing it.

“Yes you can.” The captain articulated every syllable so crisply that each word felt like it was lodging you further to the cold ground.

You struggled to gather yourself when a wave of nausea pulsed up your throat from the whiplash you gave yourself from flailing too quickly to appease his orders.

The captain huffed in disbelief when you still weren’t standing. He had seen plenty of cadets fake sickness or injuries to get their lazy asses out of the morning run.

“You think you can get out of the rest of the exercise just because you stumbled and got your uniform dirty? I think not, brat.” He scoffed, poking you with his boot. You were mortified at his insults and could only sit there in silence as your fever assaulted your body at all angles.

“What happens when you fall out there, huh?” He spat. He knelt down and roughly grabbed at your arm to lift you up. You felt like a rag doll caught in his forceful grip as you felt the vomit rearing its anguished head but not yet charging out.

“The only person you can count on picking yourself up is you.” The captain added sternly and craned his neck to force your lolling head to make eye contact with him.

You were about to respond when a pair of arms embraced you from behind. A noise of relief escaped your lips when your body found a steady source of support. You rolled your head back onto their shoulder to see the face of your roommate Mikasa as she gazed thorns at the captain.

“Captain, she's been sick! She clearly can’t run in this condition.” Mikasa exclaimed, adjusting you in her hold when she felt you slipping. You felt too woozy to watch the electric scene unfold before you, but you could feel the kinetic jolts of defensiveness bouncing between their locked eyes. After what felt like an eternity on your end, he nodded in approval.

Too weak to shower, Mikasa had dropped you off at your shared quarters after having you inspected by a nurse. Having to return to her duties she was anxious about leaving you alone. You assured her that you would be fine and that this bed is much nicer than a face full of mud and a boot in the face.

Your mishap with the captain had spread as gossip always does at HQ and as you expected the nosiest of the cadets was at the foot of your bed before you could even reflect on all that had happened.

“I’m going to wring his neck with that stupid, tiny, cravat of his.” Jean seethed as he dipped the washcloth in the bowl. He mumbled about how the nurse had missed so much of the mud that still caked your flushed exterior. Jean’s delicate strokes of cool cloth felt heavenly as it moved over your exposed skin.

“Not if I do it first.” You replied weakly. Now that your body had time to equilibrate, the anger for the way you were treated and the self pity you felt for not being stronger began bubbling to the surface. Despite his irritation, Jean carefully took your chin between his thumb and forefinger and gingerly cleaned your face.

“But you and I both know we are no match for him. Even if we are taller.” You huffed bitterly. Jean rolled his eyes and nodded in resentment.

“Yeah, he’s got too much strength in that tiny body.”

“It's all in the thighs.” Your disdained muffle made Jean chuckle.

A moment passed of comfortable silence where only the soft droplets of water against skin and cloth were heard.

“I promised Oma I would watch out for you, Y/N.” Jean said in a small voice, toying with his bottom lip in insecurity. He soaked the cloth in water once more, this time going to clean your neck.

“That’s kind of hard to do when you’re always tripping over yourself after every girl we train with.” You tried to lighten the mood, sighing when the sweet cooling sensation came back.

“Yeah, well that girl today was you unfortunately.” He retorted. “It would be better if we were on the same training schedule.”

You and Jean were in separate training squadrons and more often than not didn’t see one another besides meals and downtime. You had a sneaking suspicion that you two were assigned separate schedules because of your friendship, seeing as your closeness could be a distraction to training.

“Seriously, though, I don’t intend on breaking my promise. Even if I’m an ass most of the time.” He promised with a sincerity you rarely heard from him. It was a seriousness that only those closest to him knew behind his arrogant shield.

You smiled up affectionately at him and wondered how you got so lucky with a best friend like him. Sure he was stupid, headstrong, acted before he thought, and picked stupid fights with people. But he was also caring, sensitive, and stronger than he knew. The two of you were basically siblings at this point and you would do anything for him.

Jean looked to you when you didn’t reply and his breath hitched in his throat at the love within your eyes. He blushed and narrowed his eyes in awkward inquisition. He was never one for the mushy-gushy.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” He asked with feigned disgust as he wiped your collarbone.

“Just thinking about how you’re my ass, Jeanie.” You remarked and ruffled his hair with what strength you had. Your hand was a bit floppy with exhaustion and ended up almost poking him in the eye. He recoiled with a sputter and lightly placed your hand back at your side.

“Ew, please don’t ever say that again.”

Graduation

↞♞♘↠

“I feel like my baby is graduating!! Is this what being a mother feels like?” Hange wailed and sniffled into your hair. The moment you had stepped off of the stage with your new badges she had caged you into a breath-stealing bear hug.

“You’re going to pay for all my training equipment then right, Mom?” You teased into her shoulder and her sniffling immediately ceased.

“Little sister it is then.” She said and pulled you outward so she could look at you. Her hands squeezed your shoulders gently.

“Nonetheless, I’m so proud of you!” She proclaimed affectionately.

“Thank you, Hange. That means a lot to me. I couldn’t have gotten this far without a squad leader as extraordinary as you.” Your confession was paired with a warm smile that sent Hange into a sputtering mess once again.

“HOW DID YOU GET SO SWEET? I’m not going to lie, I’m going to miss being your squad leader.” She sighed and pinched your cheeks. “It forced you to spend time with me.”

“I’m still going to be spending time with you, I’m on the titan bio-team remember?” You giggled as her pinching intensified and you swatted her hands away.

“That’s true. I’m just going to have to get used to calling you squad leader Y/N.” She playfully saluted and you shook your head fondly.

“Yeah you and me both.”

“Now not only have you graduated in rank, but you’ve also graduated to the big-kid’s table.” Hange winked at you and your breath hitched.

Oh.

Your eyes darted over to the group of seasoned soldiers walking your way. They fell first to Erwin who was paced a few steps ahead, then to the lumbering tree that was Mike, and then to the shorter but no less intimidating captain next to him.

Looks like your teatime acquaintance would now be one of your new lunch buddies.

Little Friend

↞♞♘↠

"Oh by the goddess what on earth happened, Y/N?” Oma called. Upon seeing her dirt lathered 6 year old in the doorway she lept from her armchair and trotted over. You were the embodiment of an ice cream bar; a thick coating of mud covered every thread of your baby blue ruffled dress and every inch of your exposed skin. Your new Mary janes were caked with dried clotted earth and pieces of your curled hair was crustily sticking up with muck. Salty tears left streaks that exposed your true form underneath your outer shell. You took in a shaky exhale.

“J-Jeanie called him ugly.” You choked back a sob as you explained. Your grandmother knitted her eyebrows and crouched down to your level. She gently turned you around to examine her little mud pie for any injuries or scrapes.

“Who is Jeanie insulting?” She inquired in concern. She saw no one but yourself and you hadn’t said you were going to be playing with any other kids besides Jean today. Oma thought after serving in the garrison that nothing could surprise her. But when you reached into your left dress pocket with both hands and carefully pulled out a dark green, lopsided circular object she was proven wrong. You held it out with both arms fully extended and violently sniffed.

“PUDDLE.” You wailed. Your body shook from your childish sobs and caused the object in your hands to croak in disturbance. Oma deadpanned, face to face with the slimy creature.

“Why are you crying so much over a frog, my dear?” She blinked. You squinted your eyes a little to fight the incoming tears her words brought.

“His name is Puddle!” You scolded her with a childish anger.

“I apologize. Yes, Puddle.” She cooed, brushing the sticky pieces of hair out of your slobbery face and rubbing your cheek gently.

“Jeanie called him ugly and, and then t-tried to take him from me and-” You swallowed hard, tears freely streaming down your face and nose running. You held the frog gingerly to your chest and covered the spots where it’s ears would be located with your fingers.

“Said that he would eat him.” You whispered, bottom lip quivering uncontrollably. Oma huffed in disbelief at the whole situation but a warm smile graced her hardened features when you began stroking the creature’s head lovingly.

“How dare he call this beautiful creature ugly. That boy is-” Oma started.

“STUPID, HE’S SO STUPID.” You interjected, crying harder now. Oma brought you to her chest and let you get the rest of your waterworks out into her shoulder while she patted your back comfortingly. Puddle’s croaks were muffled by your embrace.

“Yes he sure is, darling. Well, we most certainly will not eat him. Shall we find a place to keep him so Jeanie can’t hurt him?” Your grandmother proposed sweetly and pulled you at arms length to free poor Puddle from his human hug-prison. She booped you on the nose with her finger and you giggled, the remnants of your sadness fading away at the idea of keeping your new friend. You started brightly bouncing up and down like you were a frog yourself.

“Thank you Oma!”

“Alright, come let’s go see what we can find.” She got to her feet and straightened out her dress before leading you into the parlor to find a suitable home for your new pet.

“Why did you name him Puddle?” She asked in idle curiosity. You seemed very passionate about that name.

“He lived in a puddle, that’s why his name is Puddle.” You stated as if it was the most simple law of the universe. She turned back from her rummaging to see you holding Puddle above your head and twirling slowly. You would lower it every so often to give it an Eskimo kiss and then return to your little dance.

Oma would never tire of seeing that childhood innocence and happy grin on your face.

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